Our soi disant progressives tend to discourage us these days not only from reading the great books, but even from classifying any serious book from the past as “great” at all. Assuming, of course, that it is the European or Western past to which one is referring. Almost anything from elsewhere is to be accorded exaggerated respect. Hence the outraged response of scores of tenured academics at some of the country’s most prestigious universities a few years ago at the very idea of a degree course in Western civilisation, or a course in “great books”, in the manner of an…