Naples Daily News: Did you ever worry that Winston Churchill had been written about too much? You’ve mentioned how the smaller window of time — the year of the Blitz — offered a chance to explore aspects of Churchill that other writers hadn’t.
Erik Larson: I worried constantly about that, thank you. But, I also knew that the question I wanted to answer was one no one had asked before, at least not in the same way: How exactly did Churchill and his family and close advisers ever manage to endure that first, year-long German air campaign? With that as my lens, suddenly Churchill’s history seemed quite fresh — for example, the fact that 10 Downing Street ordered 78 pounds of Brown Windsor soap, or that the Churchills had to keep careful track of the booze they served to guests, lest they run afoul of rules set by the Government Hospital Fund, established so that official functions could still be held despite wartime rationing. Just teeny details, but two of the many in the book that are new. When you look at something in a new way, you always find fresh material that other writers ignored because it wasn’t relevant to the story they wanted to tell.