There was an extraordinary constellation of people, to be sure, but Macmillan also realized that the circumstances were unusual. The Toronto-based author became interested in the peace conference about 20 years ago.Īs a researcher and a teacher, she was drifting more toward international relations as an area of specialization, and she was intrigued by the cast of characters closeted in Versailles - from Lawrence of Arabia to Woodrow Wilson to Ho Chi Minh. Women of the Raj, about 19th-century British women living in Imperial India. That analysis, postulated by the late John Maynard Keynes, has been the received wisdom for more than 80 years.Ī social historian, who has degrees from the University of Toronto and Oxford, she had earlier written Peacemakers has been praised for its 'daringly politically incorrect' thesis that the Second World War was not an inevitable consequence of the mistakes made at the peace conference in Versailles at the end of the First World War. Earlier this year, she won the £3,000 Duff Cooper Prize for biography for the same book. Winston Churchill: A Study in Leadership for the £30,000 ($69,400) Samuel Johnson Prize.

The winner of the award will be announced on Thursday 27 April at an event held at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.She was speaking from her sister's home (CBC correspondent Anne Macmillan) in London, where she was fielding interviews following her upset win over Roy Jenkins's Click this link to buy tickets to the Cambridge Event: If you’ve found hearing about the six books interesting, be sure to come along to Cambridge Literary Festival at 6pm on 23rd April to hear three of our shortlisted #WinnerofWinners authors - Barbara Demick, Craig Brown and Patrick Radden Keefe – delve into their previously winning books and how they are feeling about making the shortlist. Follow on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube. For more podcasts from The Baillie Gifford Prize, click here. The podcast is generously supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation. As the first woman to ever win the Baillie Gifford Prize in 2002, MacMillan explores the fascinating figures behind the peace process and what could have been done differently to avert World War Two.

The latest episode of The Read Smart Podcast features Razia Iqbal speaking to Margaret MacMillan, author of Paris 1919, formerly titled Peacemakers, about how the book casts a new light on the negotiations that influenced the modern world.

Margaret macmillan peacemakers