No one could have called ours a raucous household. The passions of our first two years at university were spent, and we were now buried in our books. My work, as usual, was quixotic and contradictory (studying zoology by day, writing a terrible novel by night), Niall's was focussed and unrelenting. He was charming, generous-spirited and easy to live with, but I think it is fair to say that everyone was frightened of him.
It's not just that my housemate knew his subject better than his contemporaries, and knew where he wanted to take it. He also knew how to do it. While the rest of us were fumbling with bunches of odd-shaped keys, trying to jam each of them into the lock in turn, the doors kept swinging open for him. Niall Ferguson is now professor of history at New York University, and rapidly becoming one of the most celebrated intellectuals in the United States.
After university we retained an occasional friendship, during which we never quite engaged with each other's politics. I haven't seen him for three or four years, and I'm not sure what we'd talk about today. Our views, which were never close, have now polarised completely. We find ourselves on opposite sides of what will surely be the big fight of the early 21st century: global democracy versus American empire.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1228810,00.html
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