The celebrated Canadian historian sits down with Andrew Mueller to discuss her bestselling books, the history of warfare and the challenge that Vladimir Putin poses to the world order. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
I think what good history does is make us aware of the complexity of human affairs, both in the past and in the present.
There's no simple explanation for why our world is the way it is today.
There's no simple explanation for what's going on in the United States or what's going on in Russia.
There are numbers of explanations, and all we try and do is get it the best possible explanation.
In 2007, this week's guest on the Big Interview published a book about the Paris peace Conference of 1919 convened to construct a new European order following the Great War and to prevent such a conflict ever occurring again.
The conference itself was arguably not a success.
The book, to the surprise of all concerned, was Peacemakers was an immense hit, which catapulted its author into that realm of historian whose expertise in the past is regularly prevailed upon to explain the present.
Margaret MacMillan is now emeritus professor of History at the University of Toronto and of International History at Oxford University.
Her latest book is How Conflict Shaped Us.
I'm Andrew Muller and I spoke to Margaret MacMillan on the big Interview.
Well, I mean, the start seems like a place to start, I guess, and I'm just wondering if you have any recollection of the beginnings of your own interest in history to the point where you thought this could be something I could make a living at.
Well, I didn't think much of making a living because in my day, women didn't think like that for the most part.
But I did get interested in history early on, I think, partly because my parents both told very good stories.
They were great storytellers, and we loved stories about when they were young.
And so we sort of got a sense that things had happened before we came into existence.
And our grandparents also were quite good at telling stories.
And so I suppose from a very young age I just was curious about what was it like then?
How did we get to where we are now?
Was there a particular thread do you remember pulling on that led you to your specialisms?
A lot of it was accident, but I think growing up in Canada, but having a mother who came from the uk, I was aware that, you know, there was a Canada, but there was also world outside it.