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Winston Churchill was once asked what advice he had for budding politicians. “Study history, study history,” he said. “In history lie all the secrets of statecraft.” On Wednesday a

remarkable gathering of the nation’s intelligentsia took place at St Martin’s-in-the-Fields to honour a great historian, Norman Stone. Among those who spoke were the historians Andrew

Roberts and Niall Ferguson, the politicians Michael Gove and Robert Cecil, Marquess of Salisbury and the historical novelists Robert Harris and Daisy Goodwin. Several of these and many

others no less distinguished among the congregation had studied history under Norman — “mushrooms nestling at the foot of a great tree”, as he had wryly called them. All testified that the

most valuable thing they had learned at his feet had been the love of history. At a dinner held later in the Garrick Club, hosted by one of these students, Michael Maclay (a regular

contributor to TheArticle), the Cambridge don who had once taught Norman, Neil McKendrick, regaled the guests with anecdotes about the escapades of his most memorable pupil. On meeting him

for the first time, Margaret Thatcher, he said, had startled him by telling him that he had a great deal to answer for. What might that be? “Kenneth Clarke!” But the Iron Lady readily

forgave McKendrick for having launched the career of a minister she by then saw as a traitor. He had, after all, also nurtured the talents of Norman Stone and Andrew Roberts. Mrs Thatcher

was not the only leader to have valued the advice of historians. One of Norman’s French friends had been a student of the great medievalist Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, who is still working in

his tenth decade, despite having lost his sight. The author of the classic Montaillouhad, she said, been regularly consulted by Presidents Mitterrand and Chirac. Neither Sarkozy nor Hollande

had been seriously interested in history, but Macron was glad to invite historians, along with other intellectuals, to the Elysée. Whether Jupiter listens to mere mortals is another matter.

It is not, however, necessary for a statesman to emulate scholars for him or her to value their contribution. George W. Bush never even claimed to be the cleverest person in his own family,

yet he spent many hours of his presidency with a galaxy of historians, particularly Bernard Lewis, and honoured others, including Robert Conquest and Paul Johnson, with the Presidential

Medal of Freedom. It is notable that these three recipients of America’s highest civilian honour were all British. Will Boris Johnson follow this example and give a significant role to

historians at Downing Street? He is the first professional journalist to be Prime Minister, but he is by no means the first British statesman to have written works of history. Apart from

Churchill, whose books won him the Nobel Prize for literature, Clarendon and Macaulay stand out. More recently we have had such politicians as Roy Jenkins and William Hague who have written

history and biography, while eminent historians such as Hugh Trevor-Roper and Hugh Thomas have sat in the House of Lords. Both the late Sir Martin Gilbert and Sir Lawrence Freedman

participated with distinction in the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War. Boris Johnson would do well to give peerages to historians, but he should also bring them into the heart of

government, not just its periphery. The appointment of an official historiographer might be good for governance, though possibly not for the incumbent’s career. As a freelance historian,

Andrew Roberts has succeeded in remaining free of academic encumbrances while producing numerous impressive volumes on a wide range of subjects. His latest book, Leadership in War: Lessons

from Those Who Made History, ought to be required reading in Downing Street. For the Johnson administration, it would be a coup to give Roberts a formal role there too. After all, he would

be working alongside another pupil of Norman Stone, a certain Dominic Cummings. The Prime Minister loves to bang the drum for classics, no doubt rightly. But if Boris really wants to make

history, he needs historians at his side.