In an interview on The French Revolution

Let's look at Tocqueville, because here is someone who was absolutely personally involved in the historical process.

Tocqueveille, yes: of course his book is about the American Revolution. But if you read it, it's more about the French Revolution than the American Revolution. Well, it’s about democracy in general. But as Tocqueville perceives it the great problem… well, in a way, perhaps his book should be called the American Aristocracy rather than American Democracy, because it’s really all about the need in democratic politics to have a public-spirited aristocracy. Of course you didn’t use the word aristocracy then, because despite being the ideal, the word was out of fashion, and Tocqueville was writing about democracy. But he did worry that America didn't have that aristocratic element and that a democracy without that aristocratic element would not work. The Americans hadn't by then - at the time he was writing - found a substitute for the French aristocracy in France. And then Tocqueville began to see the glimmerings of possibility in America, and found an aristocracy suitable for democracy, and again I suppose you would argue that this is a subject relevant to today: as we've just got rid of our aristocracy, or toffs, or grandees as they're called, and the meritocracy that has taken their place is a disaster, rather as it happened in Republican France, and still in a way pertains, because they never found a political elite which the public was prepared to trust. All of these subjects are beautifully considered in Tocqueville's books: two volumes about the American democracy.

What was Tocqueville’s answer?

He never found one. It’s a sort of gaping hole: he struggled and struggled and struggled to find an alternative. I suppose what has taken its place in France although it hadn't quite materialised in his day was - what are those French schools called the brightest children go to?

The Grandes Ecoles?

Yes, they do have in France an educational aristocracy, and that in itself has to some extent now become hereditary, because the children of the very clever tend to be very clever too, so you've got a case where there are very many families who are top notch in France - not the old aristocracy, but the political aristocracy - much as our hereditary peers kept producing people for the House of Lords, there's this group in France who go on producing the high technicians, the elite, who are all running the civil service and the banks and even the newspapers.

Do you think Tocqueville was writing very much with a view to influencing events in France?

Absolutely. Precisely what he was doing - not perhaps in a clear conscious way, but that is what it amounts to. He was going over and over again, trying to find a way that France could overcome this gaping hole. If you suddenly, violently and in a short period of time, destroy the church hierarchy and the political hierarchy, the aristocracy, the great historical governing orders of France - you break them, get rid of them, humiliate them, kill them - you leave a gaping hole. Tocqueville was desperately searching, by looking at America, to find out how that hole could be filled, and he was finding hope that it was working in America, but he despaired (of course he lived to become an MP for the 1848 French Revolution), and he despaired of it ever happening in France and he went on searching and always writing, but it never really materialised in France in his lifetime.

He was writing much more from a pragmatic and idealistic point of view than that of a historian.

Well, he was a great idealist, and, I suppose, a pragmatist. But for anybody today, rather like reading Taine and Michelet, this is a marvelous and enlightening book about politics in general, and democracy in general, and public opinion in general, and all the things that we're still battling with in modern times are illuminated by reading these books. All these books seem to me necessary, if you want to understand contemporary politics. Certainly in politics you have to read about our civil wars too. I’m not saying this is sufficient, but one should definitely start with Michelet, Taine, Tocqueville: and now I come to the absolute central one for anybody interested in politics - Edmund Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution. There of course you get the conservative case at its most formidable - against change, in favour of tradition, in favour of heirarchy.

Coming from the point of view of somebody who couldn't conceive of how change could be for the better.

He could conceive that you could improve, which is not of course what revolutions do because the very word revolution means more than just “improve”. You should never change unless absolutely necessary: no unnecessary change. But of course, although he was an English Whig, he was an Irishman: his family had been Catholic, but he became a Protestant because he wanted to get on in English politics. He was an outsider, he was not a grandee, but he did flatter the English aristocracy in a way, by giving them a cleaner bill of health than they probably deserved. He did think it was an essential, that the English aristocracy was an essential part of our constitutional arrangements. He would be appalled to see it all got rid of in the way it has been totally got rid of in recent years. But he summarises, in a marvelous piece of writing, the case for tradition to a greater degree than any other writer I can imagine, and that's an absolutely pure pleasure book to read: the language is absolutely glowing with eloquence and passion, and marvelous stuff.

Did he have any direct experience of France?

He'd certainly been to France because everybody had been to France, but he never worked in France or anything. He was a leading Whig in England during the French Revolution. He certainly didn't pretend he had a deep knowledge of French Politics, but I suppose what he was doing was saying at all costs we must stop this from happening in England. A lot of English people, English politicians like Charles James Fox, with whom he had a great battle, I mean they were both Whigs but their personalities were very different, cheered the French Revolution. Fox of course was in favour of the French Revolution, and supported Napoleon. Today it’s unbelievable really, to think that during the Napoleonic Wars prominent British politicians would be supporting the French cause. Very strange. But in any case anybody who reads Burke's Reflections is in for a literary treat: it really is a historical work of genius so it’s not hard work: it’s a marvelous read.