On Theodore Zeldin

Theodore Zeldin believes in the powerfully transformative role of conversation:

"Individuals are no longer what they used to be, each is unique. That makes a big difference to how they work. Each one is an enigma. There are six billion people whom we need to discover. We are now in the same position as the scientists of the last century, discovering the different elements and molecules of the natural world. So there is no need to feel lost or aimless. There is a wonderful adventure before us."

Zeldin looks through both a microscope and a telescope. His ambition is literally boundless. His ambit embraces the entire human experience: all times, all peoples, all places, all knowledge. Typically, a Zeldin chapter starts with the microscope; a more or less verbatim report of an encounter with someone. Then he substitutes the telescope, linking that individual conversation to the wider human experience...filled out with some of Zeldin's own whimsical abstract illustrations and a list of suggested topics of conversation.

He says of his current `work on work' that the aim is to attempt to help set humanity on a more productive course. Zeldin is developing ideas for what he calls a `super-university' of the future that would expose its students to the practical worlds of agriculture, survival, the process of manufacturing things, the creation of art and beauty, voluntary service -- to equip them to live better, more fulfilled lives.

What do people ultimately want? They say they want `happiness' -- but do they?...in Zeldin's book "Happiness" , Sumdy finally realises that perfect happiness is akin to boredom and that the real goals of life include things like the courage to embark upon new adventures.

Zeldin is prepared to claim some identity, at least of ambition, with the Encyclopedistes of the eighteenth Century -- universalists (like Bacon, Humboldt, even Comte) who took the whole of human knowledge and, from this base, tried to think how to improve the lot of mankind

Zeldin calls women "the revolutionaries of our time".

Zeldin is also excited about the future: "what people could do in the future seemed to be more worth noticing than what they had done in the past", as he put it in Happiness. The desire to help people shape the future to their own interests is Zeldin's preoccupation now. And absolutely pivotal for this task, he acknowledges, was his early training as a historian. "The past," says Zeldin "is what provides us with the building blocks. Our job today is to create new buildings out of them"