MAIL ONLINE: The internationally celebrated historian and TV presenter Niall Ferguson has broken up with his wife of 16 years after a string of adulterous affairs.
The 45-year-old Harvard professor has left former newspaper editor Susan Douglas, with whom he has three children, for his mistress, the Somalian-born feminist Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Ms Hirsi Ali, 40, is a lawyer and former Dutch MP who wrote the script for a controversial film that criticised Islam and resulted in the assassination of its director. She is currently living under police protection in America.
Professor Ferguson, whose books, television programmes and work with financial hedge funds earn an estimated £5million a year, is understood to have been in a relationship with Ms Hirsi Ali since last summer.
Today, The Mail on Sunday can reveal how Ferguson’s philandering behaviour – described by one confidante as ‘more akin to a Premiership footballer’s louche ways than an esteemed professor’s’ – wrecked his marriage to Ms Douglas, one of Tory leader David Cameron’s closest friends, a leading member of the Tory ‘A-list’ of potential parliamentary candidates and a former Fleet Street editor.
Ferguson, who also has high-level links to the Tory Party, with a seat on the board of the Right-wing think-tank the Centre for Policy Studies, has been seen with Ms Hirsi Ali at a number of high-profile events over recent months.
Just two weeks ago they attended the Jaipur Literary Festival in India where they were photographed kissing in the opulent surroundings of the spectacular Diggi Palace.
Ms Hirsi Ali had been flown to the event secretly. She has been the subject of threats from Muslim extremists since writing the script for the movie Submission, which was critical of Islam. The history man and fatwa girl: How will David Cameron take news that think-tank guru Niall Ferguson has deserted wife Sue Douglas for Somali feminist? >>> Katie Nicholl, Miles Goslett and Caroline Graham | Sunday, February 07, 2010
THE INDEPENDENT: Right-wing circles are transfixed by the relationship between Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the neoconservative historian Niall Ferguson
The Time Magazine gala held in New York's Lincoln Centre last May was always going to be a high-octane affair. Billed as a celebration of The 100 Most Influential People in the World, it was a chance for the globe's intellectual and political glitterati to rub shoulders while making small talk about geo-politics and contemporary literature.
But amid the mingling of eminent grey matter – guests included Barack Obama's speechwriter and Oprah Winfrey – there was also a crackling of mutual physical attraction between two glamorous invitees with a shared taste for conservative politics and speaking their minds.
Yesterday, the affair sparked that night between the British historian and television presenter Niall Ferguson and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born feminist whose criticism of Islam provoked a fatwa which has left her living under police protection since 2004, was revealed – along with the news that the millionaire academic is to divorce his wife of 16 years.
Friends of the 45-year-old Harvard professor, whose books, media activities and work in high finance have made him one of the world's most bankable intellectuals with an estimated income of £5m a year, confirmed that he has left the former Fleet Street editor Susan Douglas and their three children for Ms Hirsi Ali.
A close friend of the former editor of the Sunday Express said that the split was due to Professor Ferguson "conducting a private life in a manner more akin to that of a Premiership footballer than a professor". >>> Cahal Milmo and Luke Blackall | Monday, February 08, 2010
