At the rising of the sun

Niall Ferguson, in his impressive and exuberant book Civilization, published last year, sought to explain why Western civilisation triumphed in the centuries after the Renaissance with reference to six factors. He identified them as competition, science, property, medicine consumption and work, or a particular work ethic.

These historical tours d’horizon are never without their critics, and Ferguson’s confident account of what one had thought an undoubted historical phenomenon found a memorable one in the  pages of the London Review of Books.