Telegraph (UK) profiles Niall Ferguson. It ain't pretty.

...I don’t think it is just the British press that he loathes. It is Britain as a whole. Ferguson moved to Massachusetts to take up a prestigious role as the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard seven years ago. He has just completed a year as Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs at the London School of Economics, but he doesn’t even bother to pretend he likes it here. His contempt is evident in his sneering delivery, the way he contorts his handsome face. “Get me to the airport,” he says, emitting a rare laugh. “I just want to get back to the US. I just want to get away from all of this.”

Civilization is about the West losing its grip, though clearly he reckons that Britain lost it a long time ago. Indeed, it is difficult to know which of his gripes about the country to start with, and being with him at times feels like one long moan. I leave him – or rather he leaves me, though not before telling me to pay for our coffees, which I would have done anyway – with the distinct impression that the country should feel honoured that he has deigned to come back and spend any time with us at all....

...“The obsession with social status of an hereditary nature. Nobody gives a s--- about that in America.” Really? Aren’t their schools and universities and their political systems just as elitist, if not more so? But he’s off on one, and there is no point trying to interrupt....

What does he think of fellow historian David Starkey’s now infamous Newsnight comments on the riots? “David’s a brilliant man, and he’s a brave one to challenge the politically correct assumptions of the British media. Starkey was just telling it like it is, and anybody who isn’t able to stomach that is trapped in a self-imposed mental prison. We’ve got to be able to talk about this stuff, otherwise we are never going to understand why relatively poor kids feel so alienated from civilisation and their own rule of law.”...