Sir Anthony Seldon, 67, has written and edited more than 40 books on contemporary history, including biographies of John Major, Tony Blair and David Cameron. He was vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham until 2020 and was knighted in 2014 for services to education and modern political history.
What was your childhood or earliest ambition?
To be a writer and storyteller. I would dictate stories to my parents. Freddy the Frog still awaits publication.
Private school or state school? University or straight into work?
Two prep schools, Dulwich and Bickley Park, then Tonbridge School. At Worcester College, Oxford, I read philosophy, politics and economics because my father was an economist and writer. I adored Oxford. It was very liberating. I directed a lot of plays and met life-long friends. I didn’t do a lot of work. The curriculum was dull. I scraped a good enough degree to go to LSE and write a doctorate and start taking work seriously.
Who was or still is your mentor?
My parents. My English teacher at school, Jonathan Smith, the writer. I had to leave for half a term for organising a demonstration against the Vietnam war. I was allowed back to resit my A-levels, and I lived with him and his wife Gilly. He helped me to rethink myself. Robert Ogilvie, an extraordinary headmaster and an Oxford don.
How physically fit are you?
I do yoga twice a day, I walk 13,000 paces every day. Physical health is really important and we haven’t highlighted it enough in education.
Ambition or talent: which matters more to success?
Both, though ambition is more important. Throughout my life, I’ve been astonished by people who’ve been talented and not risen far, and the ambitious who’ve got to the top.
How politically committed are you?
Very, but not party political. I’ve always been emotionally on the left, intellectually more on the right. I’m a 19th-century liberal. My political heroes are those who don’t segment people by race or region or social background, but who highlight what we share in common.
What would you like to own that you don’t currently possess?
Enduring love.
What’s your biggest extravagance?
It used to be a Plus 8 Morgan sports car. Now, it is finding old, exquisite restaurants in France and having long meals with friends. I’ve moved beyond finding happiness in inanimate objects. It’s the solace of harmony, with others, with oneself, that is clearly the only wise object.
In what place are you happiest?
Devon country lanes in spring, with the high hedges and wildflowers: bluebells, campion, stitchwort.
What ambitions do you still have?
To see my three children happy and fulfilled, a responsibility I am all the more conscious of since my wife died of cancer four years ago. To forgive others, and forgive myself. And to try to do good.
What drives you on?
I’ve been blessed all my life with energy. I want to try to bring more happiness through bodies like Action for Happiness, which I co-founded, and the International Positive Education Network, of which I’m president.
What is the greatest achievement of your life so far?
My children. A very happy marriage. I don’t think I’ve done anything else that is important.
What do you find most irritating in other people?
Doing the things I’m most guilty of myself, like talking too much.
If your 20-year-old self could see you now, what would he think?
“Try harder, you’ve still got a lot to do.”
Which object that you’ve lost do you wish you still had?
I can’t think of an inanimate one.
What is the greatest challenge of our time?
Artificial intelligence. We will solve climate change, because ultimately it’s in the interest of governments and business to solve it. But it isn’t in the interests of either to solve the riddles of AI, which could be the greatest boon or could strip away that which makes human life meaningful.
Do you believe in an afterlife?
I live sometimes in that afterlife. I think it’s less a belief and more an experience: numinous eternity in the present moment. We can all experience this, but we have to lay down the grinding gears of our habitual, judging minds.
If you had to rate your satisfaction with your life so far, out of 10, what would you score?
Five. I worked too hard at the wrong things and not hard enough at the things that really matter. But I have time to correct that.
“The Impossible Office? The History of the British Prime Minister” by Anthony Seldon is published by Cambridge University Press
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