The historian talks about his family
Both my grandfathers fought in wars: my father's father fought in the first world war, where he was shot and gassed and suffered permanent lung damage, while my mother's father fought the Japanese in Burma and contracted tuberculosis. It was my mother's father who was the biggest influence. He was a journalist. He was the one who encouraged me to write. I used to write plays and short stories at school, giving him things I had written as Christmas presents. The relationship between us was intense. We were on the same wavelength about so many things. He had three great rules: trust no one, tell them nothing and to thine own self be true. Those were his three great principles. The west of Scotland is a tough place.
My father gave me a very strong sense of self-discipline and the moral value of work. As a doctor who worked long hours and who was dedicated to his job, he signalled to me that work was a noble thing. My mother encouraged my creative side. We conspired one week, when there was a fabulous series of Greta Garbo films on television, that I would feign illness and we would watch the films together. That combination of my father's strict discipline and my mother's sense that if something really valuable was to be had, then you could bend the rules a bit, was really valuable.
My younger sister got the science gene. She did her PhD at Yale and is now a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She's the serious one. I'm the frivolous one. She does real stuff: the physics of cell membranes. I can't understand a word of her published work, not even the titles. If you are as different as we are, then it's possible to be amicable, but not that close.
We look for ourselves in our children. But it's surprising how little of one's obvious traits appear. By the time your children are 17, you think: "What has that person got to do with me?" My eldest son is a sporty, popular, easy-going, confident boy. I certainly wasn't at 17.
I was a good father for babies and toddlers. I have been a less good father in the mid-years. I read all the Harry Potters with them, I taught them to ride bikes. I did a lot of the bottle-feeding stuff, a real hands-on father. But then from 2002, the combination of making TV programmes and teaching at Harvard took me away from my children too much. You don't get those years back. You have to ask yourself: "Was it a smart decision to do those things?" I think the success I have enjoyed since then has been bought at a significant price. In hindsight, there would have been a bunch of things that I would have said no to. But I've been a good father for teenagers. I take them on great skiing holidays. But I am mindful that my youngest got a raw deal. I was out of his life when he was three or four. There, I would give myself an F. But you have to do a lot wrong to lose your children's love. It is inbuilt. I hope they understand. So far none of them is in therapy.
You could say that divorce is a family tragedy. My sense, however, is that marriage is not something that is guaranteed to last a lifetime. People who are not blood relations may have an affinity for one another or they may not, or they may just have an affinity for 17 years. But I wouldn't classify divorce as a tragedy. I would call it one of life's changes. One shouldn't have too much heartache and remorse about it. Going through a divorce is not exactly a recipe for eternal friendship but our relationship is as good as these things can be.
Civilization: The West and the Rest is published by Allen Lane. The TV series Civilization: Is the West History? is on Channel 4 on Sunday nights at 8pm
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/mar/19/niall-ferguson-my-family-values
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