LAURENCE REES: And the single most overrated leader?

JULIET GARDINER: Churchill. He was both the best leader and I think he was also the most overrated leader. I think he was a fantastic short term, crisis, war time leader. Churchill was always fantastic in a crisis, in a single issue: brilliant. When it came to understanding social policy, his rejection of the Beveridge plan, things like that, it was a disaster, and he made a lot of very stupid military decisions, or tried to make them, to interfere - though you’ve got to read Alanbrooke’s diaries to see that. I think by 1942, 1943, Churchill was not a good wartime leader.