A few weeks ago, I received an invitation from Tim Davie, the BBC’s Director-General, to listen to Rutger Bregman deliver this year’s BBC Reith Lecture.

Rutger Bregman is the Dutch version of Owen Jones, famously going viral worldwide on TikTok after mocking the Davos elite to their faces. Bregman is the public intellectual du jour and darling of the Guardian reading classes. He is, you might think, an odd choice to follow in the heavyweight footsteps of the likes of previous Reith lecturers such as the philosopher Bertrand Russell or the physicists Robert Oppenheimer and Stephen Hawking.

The invitation included dinner afterwards (venison carpaccio, herb-crusted lamb rump followed by tarta de Santiago if you are interested). So it was that I found myself in the Broadcasting House Radio Theatre on a Tuesday night listening to Bregman deliver his ‘A Time of Monsters’ oration. Beforehand, the host Anita Anand made sure to tell me that she would look out for........

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