Norman Stone: Britain's a terrible bore, that's why I left
Although he does not seem like a misanthropist, there are plenty of things about British society that Professor Norman Stone does not like. Let us begin with the big one.
Stone has insisted we forgo our planned rendezvous at his club (the Garrick), because he needs to smoke. We are therefore sitting at a table outside a Covent Garden pub.
“The nanny state,” he says with venom. “The nanny state here is a terrible bore.” Not that Stone spends much time in Britain anyway, since for the past 10 years he has been based at Bilkent University in the Turkish capital of Ankara. And Turkey, by contrast, is positively antinannyish.
“Wonderful place,” he enthuses, lighting up. “As soon as I stepped off the plane, I became a Turkish nation-alist! There was a man in a black uniform, smoking heavily underneath a ‘No smoking’ sign. I thought, ‘That’s my kind of place’.”
This is exactly the sort of gently rebellious gesture that would appeal to Stone, 66, who has spent a lifetime agitating against the Establishment, while at the same time enjoying a career firmly within it. He is back here to promote his latest book.
For 13 years the Glaswegian-born academic was professor of modern history at Oxford University, where he immediately cemented his reputation as a maverick, media-friendly don. Columns (notably for this newspaper), myriad appearances on News-night, even a stint on Radio 4’s The Moral Maze marked him out as anything but a lofty academic.
Some called his reign at Oxford “brilliant but turbulent”, while Edward Heath said that “many parents of Oxford students must be both horrified and disgusted that the higher education of our children should rest in the hands of such a man”, which was pretty stern stuff considering that Stone was (and still is) one of the cleverest, most articulate people to advocate the Tory cause....