Looking at hatred across the world (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Looking at hatred across the world

3:08pm Monday 17th July 2006 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
•  

THE WAR OF THE WORLD: HISTORY'S AGE OF HATRED. Publisher: Allen Lane; Author: Niall Ferguson; Price: £25.

Choosing between historians who flaunt their wares on television, there is little doubt who is the natural poster boy.

David Starkey may be more cutting, but for aesthetic appeal look no further than Niall Ferguson.

With a writer who is barely escapable both in print and on the small screen - to the extent that his new book puffs his Channel 4 series on the front cover - the accusation that his written work is of secondary importance is easily levelled.

With a title like The War Of The World, Ferguson cannot escape the charge of bombast.

It's true to say there's no opportunity to make a headline missed, or any shortage of shock tactics, but Ferguson is too thoughtful a historian and to assiduous a researcher to allow such a charge to stand.

Indeed, in his hands, as in too few others, occasionally radical, at least contrary and certainly provocative historical narrative is delivered both barrels.

War Of The World is no exception.

Ethnic conflict, rapid economic change and the end of empire are the driving force behind 20th century conflict, he argues.

The carnage and disaster that century wrought will leave the East, not the West, a reigning legacy.

Ever lucid, punchy and absorbing, Ferguson's work is at times not as controversial as it might suggest, and his argument allows the most words for its strongest points.

But Ferguson is cheaply criticised as both right wing and populist.

A Thatcherite he may have been, but his writing is not knee-jerk political.

And since we're interested in history, why not have catalogue model looks delivering it in an energetic, challenging way?