People

This is my office in the drawing room of our home in Eaton Square, where we moved three years ago. I keep about 3,000 books in here and the other half of the room is dedicated to socialising. It’s only a small proportion of the number of books I own, so I think I am going to try to colonise the dining room next.

1. I’ve been reading David Chandler’s The Campaigns of Napoleon. I’m writing a biography of Napoleon at the moment, which I have to deliver on January 2014. My new book, The Storm of War, has just been published so I have a little bit of time on my hands.

2. This is a little picture of a pig drawn in 1959 by Winston Churchill with his eyes closed. I’m a great admirer of Churchill, who plays a large part in my book Masters and Commanders and also, of course, in my most recent book.

3. I’ve had a bad back for years, and I find this ergonomic chair helps enormously. You kneel on the two pads and it has no back as that’s the thing that can damage you and give you bad posture.

4. My desk used to belong to my grandfather. The green leather on the top is pretty much gone, but I’m fond of it. On it, I have pictures of my children and (out of view) tiny statuettes of Napoleon and a signed menu of a dinner that was given at Annabel’s by a friend of mine, Robin Birley, to celebrate my engagement to Susan, my wife.

5. I collect the autographs of various people that I admire. This is a signed copy of Rudyard Kipling’s moving poem to the Australian war dead of The Great War, dated November 1934. I have always loved that poem. It sums up the sacrifice of the Australians very beautifully.

6. This is the ministerial box that Sir John Simon, who was British Foreign Secretary and Lord Chancellor, brought along to the Versailles conference of 1919. I won’t tell you what’s in it.

7. I look out on to some utterly beautiful gardens, and I enjoy watching a great big fluffy Persian cat that sits very contentedly on a wall opposite me.

Andrew Roberts' The Storm of War: A new history of the Second World War is out now, Allen Lane, £25