Our guest on 03.07.2011 Peter Watson, Journalist and Author

About every seven years, British author Peter Watson turns his enthusiasm to a new topic. Most recently, that topic was the Germans and their cultural and intellectual history.

His interest gave birth to his book "The German Genius," in which the 67-year-old compiled German achievements in such diverse areas as philosophy, physics, art and archaeology. He was motivated by his own ignorance, because, as he says, the crimes of the Nazi era, racist fanaticism, war and the Holocaust shape Germany's image to this day, and not just abroad, blinding people to the times before and after that era.

An enthusiastic cricketer and angler, Peter Watson was born in 1943 in Britain. He studied in Durham, Rome and London. There he also began his career as a journalist for major newspapers such as the Sunday Times, the New York Times and the Observer.

With exposés of antiquities smuggling and art theft, he made a name for himself beyond the newspaper industry. A voracious reader and prolific writer, he turned to authorship. To date he has published more than a dozen non-fiction books. Added to that are biographies and crime novels. The avowed Londoner spends four to five months a year together with his partner in France, where the couple own a house.