David Selbourne (born 4 June 1937) is a British political philosopher, social commentator and historian of ideas. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School , and Balliol College, Oxford , where he studied Jurisprudence, held the Winter Williams Law Scholarship, and was awarded a Paton Studentship and the Jenkins Law Prize. He was thereafter a British Commonwealth Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School , and in 1960 was called to the bar of the Inner Temple where he was student scholar, but did not practise law. He is the father of Raphael Selbourne , winner of the 2009 Costa First Book Award .
19-445: Selbourne may refer to: People David Selbourne , British political commentator Raphael Selbourne , British author Places Selbourne, Tasmania See also Selborne Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Selbourne . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change
38-551: A forgery; he noted that the garbled name Baiciu for a famous rebel "was only known to the narrator of the account in a form which derived from an 18th-century misreading of an Arabic manuscript— as good a proof as any that something is badly amiss." Roz Kaveny, reviewing the book in New Statesman noted that "By coincidence, much of what Jacob d'Ancona dislikes in 13th-century China is what David Selbourne dislikes in late-20th century Britain" and thought that she recognized in
57-424: A trading voyage to China by a thirteenth-century merchant, Jacob of Ancona . Doubted by most scholars, but its authenticity defended by others, it has passed through many subsequent editions, and has been translated in turn into Chinese and some dozen other languages. Thus far, Selbourne has not given further details about its provenance, and has not formally replied to allegations that he is its author. The preface to
76-630: Is considered to be a forgery but there has been continued support for the authenticity of the book. In 1997, Little, Brown and Company was prepared to publish the diary, under the title The City of Light in the United States. The house had just published the book in the UK when word spread that China scholar Jonathan Spence , the Sterling Professor of History at Yale, had written a book review for The New York Times that questioned
95-400: The 'underground universities'. Selbourne's works of political thought offer a general perspective on events of the last decades, and draw dispassionate and independent-minded conclusions from their consideration. They include Against Socialist Illusion (1985) – written while he was still at Ruskin, a college of adult education supported by the labour movement, and a work which was regarded by
114-650: The American edition of the book (2000) and its introduction describe the controversy and defend the authenticity of the manuscript. In June 2001, he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic by president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. Roz Kaveny, reviewing the book in New Statesman noted that "By coincidence, much of what Jacob d'Ancona dislikes in 13th-century China is what David Selbourne dislikes in late-20th century Britain" and thought that she recognised in
133-738: The Oxford Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and his brother, David, professor of Islamic history at Tel Aviv University publicly called attention to an anachronism, Jacob's arrival at a mellah in the Persian Gulf , a descriptive for a ghetto based on the root for "salt", that was not used until the 15th century, in Morocco. In 2018, Stephen G. Haw , writing in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , considered
152-836: The Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool, the Northcott Theatre, Exeter, the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, the Soho Theatre, London, and elsewhere. In 1982, Selbourne's The Making of A Midsummer Night's Dream , a first-hand account of Peter Brook's rehearsals of the play for the Royal Shakespeare Company, was published, and has since established itself as a key work for students of theatre. At
171-531: The book to be a modern forgery and cited many issues with the accuracy of the text. Such issues included sailing eastward during the wrong time of the year and the timeframe it took to travel to China, several Chinese words purportedly used by Jacob based on the Wade-Giles romanization system and the influence of popular but outdated information on Champa based on 20th century scholarship. Haw concludes "My own final judgment of Jacob d’Ancona’s The City of Light
190-533: The book's authenticity. Despite growing pressure, David Selbourne has continued to refuse to make the original manuscript available for public scrutiny. At the last minute, in September 1997, Little, Brown and Co. pulled the diary from US publication, scheduled for 3 November. T. H. Barrett, School of Oriental and African Studies, in The London Review of Books , 30 October 1997, described the text as
209-407: The dialectical principles with which d'Ancona controverts his ideological opponents close parallels with Selbourne's own rhetorical techniques. She concluded that one might prefer "to suppose that the dilemma, and the document, are mirages, that his book is a postmodernist literary device ." Chinese Central Television (CCTV) made a three-part documentary film on the work entitled "Return to Zaiton",
SECTION 10
#1732798064833228-441: The dialectical principles with which d'Ancona controverts his ideological opponents close parallels with Selbourne's own rhetorical techniques. She concluded that one might prefer "to suppose that the dilemma, and the document, are mirages, that his book is a postmodernist literary device ." In December 2007 a University of London professor read a public lecture "The Faking of 'The City of Light'". Bernard Wasserstein , president of
247-598: The first part of which was screened on 17 December 2020 Jacob of Ancona The City of Light or The City Of Light: The Hidden Journal of the Man Who Entered China Four Years Before Marco Polo is a book purportedly made by a scholarly Jewish merchant called "Jacob d'Ancona" who wrote in vernacular Italian, an account of a trading venture he made, in which he reached China in 1271, four years before Marco Polo . The narrative contains political debates about
266-586: The future of the city in which he engaged with the aid of a translator of mixed Italian and Chinese ancestry. The book is considered to be a forgery. The book is published in English with a translation by David Selbourne . The Italian manuscript from which Selbourne professed to have made his translation has not come to light, even in photocopies; its possessor still remains anonymous. Selbourne asserts that "provenance and rights of ownership over it are unclear," motivating its owner's desire for anonymity. The text
285-492: The left as a provocation – The Principle of Duty (1994), which argued that limits must be set to selfish individual entitlement if a free social order is to be preserved, The Spirit of the Age: An Account of Our Times (1995) and The Losing Battle with Islam (2005). There has also been widespread controversy over his book The City of Light (1997), which Selbourne has claimed to be a translation of an account of
304-496: The link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Selbourne&oldid=933117792 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages David Selbourne Selbourne was born in London but brought up near Manchester, where his father
323-657: The narrow world of left orthodoxy behind him – writing for The Times, Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph among others. His heterodox writings in the 1980s on Britain for New Society were published in Left Behind: Journeys into British Politics (1987); in Death of the Dark Hero: Eastern Europe, 1987–1990 , he wrote at first-hand on the fall of communism in the region from Poland to Bulgaria, where he also participated in teaching in
342-848: The same time as teaching social and political theory at Ruskin College, Oxford, from 1966 to 1986, Selbourne contributed as a freelance journalist and commentator to New Society, the New Statesman, the Independent, and the Guardian among other publications. He also travelled widely, visiting China during the Cultural Revolution and writing An Eye to China (1975), and to India during its political emergency of 1975–77, about which he wrote An Eye to India (1977). He continued and broadened this work after leaving Ruskin – and leaving
361-621: Was in medical practice. A Doctor's Life: The Diaries of Hugh Selbourne MD , which contains his father's observations upon his patients and upon the events of the day, was published in 1989. Praised as 'one of the best modern diaries' by C.S.Handley in his Annotated Bibliography of Diaries Printed in English (2002). David Selbourne's first writings were for the theatre, and were published by Calder, Methuen and others. They include The Play of William Cooper and Edmund Dew-Nevett (1968), The Two-Backed Beast (1969), Samson (1971) and The Damned (1971). His plays were performed between 1968 and 1983 at
#832167