Andrew Roberts, who was born in 1963, took a first class honours degree in Modern History at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, where he is an honorary senior scholar. His biography of Neville Chamberlain's and Winston Churchill's foreign secretary, the Earl of Halifax, entitled The Holy Fox was published in 1991, to be followed by the controversial, but no less well-received Eminent Churchillians in 1994. In 2004, he edited 'What Might Have Been', a collection of twelve 'What If?' essays written by distinguished historians, including Antonia Fraser, Norman Stone, Amanda Foreman, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Conrad Black and Anne Somerset.
In 2005 Roberts published 'Waterloo: Napoleon's Last Gamble', which was published in America as 'Waterloo: The Battle for Modern Europe'. The publication of 'A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900' brought him an invitation to the White House in February 2007, where he delivered the prestigious White House Lecture, before he and his wife spent 40 minutes alone with President Bush in the Oval Office. The President then gave a lunch for them in the Old Family Dining Room of the Residence, also attended by Vice-President Dick Cheney, National Security Advisor James Hadley, Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and Karl Rove, who had also read or were reading the book. In the course of publicising 'A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900', Roberts appeared on C-SPAN, the Charlie Rose Show and Fox and Friends.