Thank you for downloading the 2012 BBC Reith Lectures.

This year's lectures, titled The Rule of Law and its Enemies,

are given by the economic historian Professor Neil Ferguson.

The presenter is Sue Lawley.

Hello and welcome to the last in this year's series of BBC Reith Lectures.

Today we're at the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's National Academy,

founded in 1783 at the height of the Scottish Enlightenment, a period when Scotland played a leading

part in the development of European thought. It's a fitting place to finish because our lecturer,

Neil Ferguson, is a Scotsman and he's proud of it. His subject, the rule of law and

its enemies, has tackled important but controversial issues about the future of the Western

world's democracies. Are the institutions that helped build and sustain them now in a state of

dangerous decline? Are they failing to provide us with the right economic and legal structures

that we need in order to grow and prosper? Today, he turns his attention to the bedrock

of our everyday existence, our civil society. Ladies and gentlemen, to give us his views

on civil and uncivil societies, please welcome the BBC Reith Lecturer

2012, Professor Neil Ferguson.

Although we're in my native Scotland, I want to begin with a story from Wales.

I tend to think of Wales as Scotland Light, so the story might equally well be a Scottish one.

Nearly ten years ago, I bought a house on the coast of South Wales. With its rugged,

windswept Atlantic coastline, its rain-soaked golf courses, its remnants of industrial greatness,

and its green hills, just visible through the drizzle, it reminded me a lot of where I grew up in Ayrshire, only slightly warmer, nearer Heathrow Airport, and with a rugby team more likely to beat England.

I bought the house mainly to be beside the sea, but there was a catch. The lovely stretch of coastline in front of it was hideously strewn with rubbish.

...