Dominic Cummings: History man from the (Norman) Stone Age
Dominic Cummings is in the news again. This happens from time to time and its never for entirely good reasons.
Cummings left Downing St at the end of 2020 after his apparent plans to re-organise the Civil Service were blocked
Cummings was taught modern history at Oxford by Prof. Norman Stone who died in 2019. Stone’s most well-known work was on the Eastern Front in the First World War and it’s not likely Cummings had much historical knowledge to impart about, for example, epidemics during his period at No.10
What Stone will certainly have impressed on Cummings is the public role a right-wing historian can play. Stone was a larger than life character, a controversialist, fond of a drink or two and sometimes rather more than that. He was also on occasion known for being abrasive and rude.
Otto English (Byline Times January 2020) has noted of the period when Stone was at Oxford:
Stone was an arch manipulator who specialised in malice, abuse and dismissiveness of those with whom he disagreed. He was a man lost in his own self-absorbed myth, who had an over-arching belief in his intellectual prowess over those of others.
Stone appears to have taught Cummings well. Indeed he got a first-class degree.
The problem is to assess who between Cummings and Johnson is the bigger liar. Both have a formidable track record.
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