I was in a terrible state, having sleepless nights not knowing what to do. There I was with Nicolson's money, and other people's money, having started this firm quite promisingly. So I went to Harold Nicolson and asked him what to do. And he said: "If I don't let you go and contractually force you to stay here, you'll never forgive me, you'll think everything went wrong because of it. If I let you go for ever we'll go broke, and we don't have all that much money to lose. So go for a year — give me your word of honour you'll come back." Which I did. The Israelis thought I was coming for good, they thought I was just being cautious by saying I'd only come for a year. So at the end of the time Weizmann was not best pleased that I'd left him. But I made a dramatic gesture when I went to see Sharett, saying, "Moshe, if I leave you now, every day I will get up with the thought of Jerusalem and I'll go to bed with the thought of Jerusalem. I'm yours. I'm not a religious person but I think the coat of arms of the state will always determine my life." And it's the truth.

DJ: It's fascinating that you played such an important role in the creation of Israel. 

GW: Well, I was a witness and a carrier of messages, and gave background information that they needed: they were starting a diplomatic service from nothing, had a junior Oxford don as the first head of the Foreign Office, Walter Eytan Ettingshausen. And after all the war had given one contacts and insights into the British mentality.

Andrew Roberts: Did you use the British institutions as the template?

GW: Yes I did, with institutions like the BBC for propaganda. I had about six months to organise a campaign called "Operation Jerusalem", which was to fight in the United Nations for the retention of the New City. You must realise that Jerusalem was not, and is still not, technically recognised as Israel's capital. There are no embassies in Jerusalem. They're all in Tel Aviv. 

I had to prove, paradoxically, that the New City, where we were — the Old City was in Jordanian hands — had no value in terms of old shrines and holy places. I was given one million pounds, which in those days was an awful lot, to start a campaign. Anyhow, this gave me a fantastic insight into how to do this sort of thing because I was given carte blanche to do what was needed. So I had pamphlets and books made, films, radio programmes, I brought artists like Topolski and John Minton to Israel to create lovely drawings. That was my sort of farewell to Israel. 

AR: When you came back from Israel and took over Weidenfeld & Nicolson on a day-to-day basis, to what extent were your decisions about the books that you were publishing and the authors that you were choosing conditioned by your overall weltanschauung?

GW: The list was very European-oriented, in the sense that this was my only chance of making an impression. We didn't have the reputation, the money, the experience or the contacts to compete with firms like Heinemann and Collins, who got the big British authors. But because of my talent for languages and my contacts I was able to go over to France and get de Gaulle's memoirs, and I would get Romain Gary and Henry de Montherlant.

AR: Could you make money publishing French memoirs?

GW: Yes, and of course there was the British interest in the Third Reich and Nazi Germany. There still is today. Cyril Connolly had a very amusing explanation of why we all read, and still read, books about the Third Reich. He said, "You know, it's like a family in a suburb who have an unexploded bomb in their garden. First they go to the underground cellar. Then they come up and see this unexploded bomb, and they fall in love with the bomb. And it's part of the family, they build an herbaceous border around it, and it stays there. And yet the plane is still roaring overhead." It's a brilliant description and it's perfectly true. Because you read the horrible things that have happened, but think it's no longer possible, when in fact it is.