A familiar OE-led balls-up: Rory Stewart’s The Long History of Ignorance reviewed

In my next life I intend to have my brain removed in order to become a telly executive. You know: ‘where ignorance is bliss/ ’Tis folly to be wise’ (Thomas Gray, OE). Such ignorance is a state which, happily enough, Rory Stewart, OE and a fully tooled-up Mob from rent-a-thinker (what one of those executives, without a hint of irony or faint praise, once called ‘television intellectuals’) are just now kicking around in the hope that they may rehabilitate it and release it from its sty of obloquy.

Rory is a very keen type – what used to be called an all-rounder – and, despite his protestations otherwise, he is untouched by the piggiest ignorance, and addresses his audience and contributors with the zeal of a scoutmaster.

The BBC has clearly poured a generous couple of quid into this rich if random talking-head radio series.