Ontelly

Night Waves - Niall Ferguson, Hugh Trevor-Roper

Logo for Night Waves - Niall Ferguson, Hugh Trevor-Roper

Rana Mitter talks to the historian Niall Ferguson about whether bankers need morals. The prominent post-war financier Sigmund Warburg - the subject of Ferguson's new book - said that the key to his career was "human relations". Ferguson diagnoses the root of the current financial crisis as lying in the decline of 'relationship' banking. As reports of Russian spies have revived memories of the Cold War, Peter Hennessey looks at how our attitudes to national security have changed since the collapse of Soviet communism. Rana discusses the controversial historian Hugh Trevor-Roper - unfortunately best-known now as the man who mistakenly authenticated the Hitler diaries, but one the most influential, talented and outspoken historians of his time - with his biographer Adam Sisman and the historian Richard Evans.