Baker Days
Kenneth Baker recalls the early experiences and the school-teacher that instilled him with a love of history.
When I was invited to write this piece for Point of Departure, by which is meant the magic moment at which one’s love of history was sparked off, I was quoted, as an example, Gibbon being moved by the Colosseum to write a history of the Roman Empire. But Gibbon is in a league of his own. I suspect that there are very few people who have had such a dramatic conversion as Gibbon but thank God he did. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire remains one of the great works of historiography in the canon of English Literature.
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