This article is taken from the October 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

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I first met Sir Larry Siedentop in June 2015. One year before Brexit and 800 after the signing of Magna Carta, a rather serious panel led by Dominic Grieve was convening to discuss the latter’s relevance to the modern world. I was invited at the last minute by my doctoral supervisor; the man in the chair beside me finally introduced himself as “Larry. Larry Siedentop.”

“The author of Inventing the Individual?”

“The same. Do you write?”

“Yes, I’m finishing my doctorate in law.”

“Why aren’t you practising?”

“I interned at a law firm last year. The work was dull, the culture soulless, and the people repellent. Never again.”

“Good for you, good for you. Here’s my number and address. Visit next time you are in London.”

And with that he was off. I was then a callow youth of 24 from Consett and Bristol University, but eventually summoned the courage to call his landline and attempt a visit en route to a skanky night out at Sway.

“Hello, is that Larry?” “Yes.”

“Larry, it’s Patrick from Portcullis House. I’m in London tomorrow, may I stop by?” “Patrick, yes — at 3pm.”

“Great, looking forw … [Phone down].”

Mid-afternoon the following day, I pressed the buzzer to his stately address in Holland Park. On the stairwell to the first floor, a lock cracked and the door ahead was heaved open, after which I was ushered into the most remarkable living room I have ever seen. The Marriage of Figaro played from a 90s stereo, tapestries and Old Masters lined the walls, a CBE adorned the mantlepiece, beautiful pottery stood on pedestals in each corner, and an ancient footstool buckled under the weight of magazines and books on European politics.

“When I acquired it, academics and artists lived all around here. Only bankers now. And the noise from traffic. Such a pity. Where do you live?”

“In a flatshare in Clifton. With four friends I met in a pub last year.”

“[Laughing] Are they still your friends?” “As far as I can tell.”

“You can always tell.” “How?”

“Conversation. Do you talk late into the night?” “Yes, but mainly about low culture and bad behaviour.”

“[Laughing] Then they are your friends. But you really must cultivate an appreciation for high culture. Civilisation depends on such things.”

Thereafter, and during each subsequent visit, I came to appreciate just how uncultured I really was for a mid-twenties graduate. Such a brilliant mind as his, were it moved by any lesser spirit, would have long ceased to answer my calls and permit regular visits. Yet Larry did not, and to my quiet astonishment and delight, he always made time.

At first, our conversations were one-directional knowledge transfers and I was pulled up mercilessly for bad habits of speech, such as excessive use of “you know”, “er … ” and “em … ” Some weeks later, after I had learned to catch myself whenever I slipped into using them, he looked directly at me and stated, “I have listened to you talk today and you have eradicated those irritating terms. Good.” Starting to feel somewhat pleased with myself, I was caught off-guard again with, “Have you seen The Last Kingdom on the BBC?” “Yes.”

“Good. It is a convincing depiction of King Alfred, and you should take solace from that.” “How so?”

“Look at the way he feels the absence of learning, then strives to remedy it until he expires. Now there is an example for you.”

Not being entirely sure how to take this, and doubtless after a long pause, the conversation turned to the great figures met during own lifetime: Isaiah Berlin — “remarkable, remarkable”. The late Queen — “a bright woman”. Ronald Dworkin — “an American lawyer”. Chistopher Hitchens — “he lit up a joint in the common room, told me he was leaving for London, went out drinking around Oxford, then came sheepishly knocking on my door at the end of the night”.

The cardinal sin of public and intellectual life was to be ungenerous and uninteresting, and no quarter was permitted to those who had nothing to offer or offered nothing. This went for institutions as much as individuals, and he was appalled at the proliferation of quangos and public inquiries endlessly soaking up time and resources to the detriment of good government. One could see this insight — that democratic civilisation depends on individual responsibility and cultural confidence — marbling throughout his greatest writing.

Unlike most contemporary Oxford dons who churn out papers for promotion, Larry remained resolutely unprolific. He wrote only the books he wished to write, and he took his own good time writing them. A lifetime spent at the centre of global intellectual power produced a mere trilogy spread across decades: Tocqueville (1994), Democracy in Europe (2001) and Inventing the Individual (2014). We are the richer for it.

Read his study of Tocqueville to marvel at an extraordinary life and the raucous spirit that built America; read his treatise on European democracy and despair at what Europe might have been and what the increasingly undemocratic European Union has become; read his masterpiece on the history of secular freedom to understand everything about yourself, your civilisation and the greatest dangers to both.

To take just the latter as an example, he guides us through his own Divine Comedy from life within the prehistoric (and indeed modern-day) tribe — “we must imagine ourselves into a world where action [is] governed by norms reflecting exclusively the claims of the family, its memories, rituals and roles, rather than the claims of individual conscience” — through the ancient cosmos and city, the Middle Ages and “birth pangs of liberty”, right down to our current predicament caused by the loss of shared belief in the Christian foundations of freedom.

For readers unfamiliar with his work, Inventing the Individual is the place to start and let his limpid prose carry you across the millennia. Your investment will pay out with interest as you come to appreciate the value of monkish associationalism, the lingering universalism of Roman law, the equitable consequences of Germanic honour codes, and the civilisational coherence provided by Christian theology. For those left wanting more, he died leaving unfinished a new biography of Tocqueville “for these grim times”, so we can only hope his executors and editor are able to collate its fragments for posthumous publication.

Each visit to Larry’s was like imbibing his books in concentrate. There would be humour: “Do you know how many unread emails were in my account when I last opened it a decade ago? 97,000. 97,000!” There would be insights into national character: “The Italians think children should be seen and heard in public. The English do not like children at all.” There would be disgust at the re-desecration of the Hagia Sophia: “Appalling. And barely a protest from the West, just like the first time.”

There would be commentary on Gregory of Tours’ timeless opening lines (c.594): “A great many things keep happening, some of them good, some of them bad. The inhabitants of different countries keep quarrelling fiercely with each other … ” [Laughing] “Well, who can gainsay that?” There would be stern disapproval of cultural fads: “I do not like this new tendency for statesmen to cry in public. It is so incredibly undignified.”

There would be scathing reviews of postmodern attempts at high culture: “Why would anyone think to stage Shakespeare or Mozart in contemporary clothing? Why?” There would be musings on the two main types of people in the world: “Some are drawn to the mountains, others to the sea. I am somewhere in between.”

There would also be glimpses into his own continent-spanning court: breakfast with a former student/cabinet minister; a lunchtime joust at the Beefsteak club; dinner with a senior diplomat; a visit to the Netherlands to guide affairs of state; and, of course, sojourns to his beloved Montpelier to host a one-in-one-out carousel of guests at his apartment on the Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau. “Ah, bliss!” he would exclaim when setting foot on French soil.

I last saw Larry after a long Covid interlude. Walking in his garden on a winter’s evening, he was as sharp as ever but looked much frailer under his infamous fisherman’s hat. We covered the usual gamut of subjects — the intellectual disintegration of the Conservatives, the growth of clan politics in British elections, Mozart, Ken Burns’ The Civil War, and what was to become the Pharos Foundation. When I turned to say goodbye, he shot me a final wry glance and said, “Your speech remains free of annoying stutters. Good. Very good.” With that, the door closed and he was gone.

He leaves behind a remarkable legacy. For me, he was the first friend and mentor who did not regard ambition as dangerous or vulgar, simply as something all young men should pursue under the correct (his) principled guidance. For his former Oxford students, he was the epitome of a latter day philosophe, having, as his Guardian obituary put it, “wafted in from the age of enlightenment” to cultivate, admonish and enrich in equal measure.

For his many friends, his warmth and wit will linger in the memory long after his passing. For the world, he bequeaths some of the best books on Western civilisation yet written, and a raft of distinguished former tutees who are better — and better-educated — than they ever could have been without him.

Larry’s memorial service, to be held at Keble College, Oxford this Michaelmas term, will honour a truly great man — attend if you can; there are few such men left. Godspeed, old friend.