If you click here you will get to The Guardian’s review to Margret Thatcher’s favourite historian – Norman Stone. Right-wing, undoubtedly brilliant, his survey texts were perhaps his real strength. I have also included one of his last lectures below. He was also one of that line of historians who got himself into many rows with his peers.
“At a time when malice and rudeness were highly prized by some right-wing Cambridge dons, Stone outdid them all in the abuse he hurled at anyone he disapproved of, including feminists (“rancid”), Oxford dons (“a dreadful collection of deadbeats, dead wood and has-beens”), students (“smelly and inattentive”), David Cameron and John Major (“transitional nobodies”), Edward Heath (“a flabby-faced coward”) and many more.
Stone was undoubtedly clever. He could write entertainingly and could summarise complex historical circumstances in a few pregnant sentences, gifts which brought him a flourishing career as a journalist and commentator. He was a talented linguist who read and spoke more than half a dozen languages, including Hungarian. Yet his career was also dogged by character flaws that prevented him from fulfilling his early promise as a historian.”
Have a read and see what you think.
Mr Kydd.
