The subject of the fifth episode in Niall Ferguson’s series was consumerism, which predictably enough he quite likes.  I think most of us have a soft spot for consumerism whether or not we admit to others or even to ourselves.  But it is a rather magical feeling going to the shops and finding that everything

Writing in the Telegraph James Delingpole picks up on a throw away point made by Niall Ferguson in the episode about medicine in his series Civilization: Is the West History?   Ferguson pointed out that eugenics was widely believed at the turn of the twentieth century, but is now known to be nonsense and dangerous nonsense

I first read the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire at about the age of 14 in a copy borrowed from my local public library.  It was a huge battered old volume with thick slightly yellowed paper.  It looked old enough to have been around since not long after the fall of the Roman

H.G.Wells – thanks to Wikipedia for the image When I was very young, 12 or 13 maybe, I acquired a paperback of  H.G.Wells’ History of the World.  I probably bought it at a jumble sale but I may have just found it left on a train.  It remains the only book which having read, I

European imperialism gets a bad press these days.  Somehow, world domination just doesn’t seem to be regarded as a valid goal any more.  But when European rule was at its height in Africa, there was an argument that it was a force for good.   It had the mission of civilising the world.  And as

Dambisa Moyo (thanks to Wikipedia for image) If you are going to write a book proposing that giving aid to Africa is a bad idea, you are going to find it much easier to do if you are African.  If you are an African with a very solid background in economics so much the better.