Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
The most civilized reading you could have if you want to know how a educated honourable, religious - progressive but deeply religious - man can think about the human condition. They're fantastically frank.
A nice antidote to the French Revolution.
Yes, I mean there are essays about freedom and about class issues and so on but I think it’s a marvelous counterpoint to reading these 18th and 19th century…
Gory tales of revolution.
Yes, and it takes you back. I mean he lived through the religious wars in France, and he wrote from his tower - which you can still visit, by the way, I mean its open to the public. He’s sublimely profound but they're so reposeful, so thoughtful, so reasonable, they represent civilisation. It’s a lesson in civilisation just to read them, if one could be like him the world would be a better place. I wish somebody had told me to read them and I’d done them all together, and consistently, and kept them by me and learnt them by heart and, my goodness, I wish that every journalist who writes about politics would do the same.
Read full interview.png)
Peregrine Worsthorne is a journalist, writer and broadcaster. He was a leader writer and foreign correspondent for the Times from 1948-1953, and was the editor of the Sunday Telegraph from 1985-1991. He contributes to the New Statesman and to the online magazine The First Post. He is the author of The Socialist Myth, 1972, Tricks of Memory, 1993 and In Defence of Aristocracy, 2004.
