What Do I Know Paul Kent Author:Paul Kent Michel de Montaigne wrote his Essais in France in the 16th century, and since then no-one has surpassed his skill at supposition, irony and enquiry. Now ex-BBC and Oneword Radio producer Paul Kent takes on his hero's mantle to speculate on what Montaigne might have made of the modern world. While introducing the general reader to the works and a... more »pproach of the great man, Kent takes the opportunity to look at modern phenomena - everything from alcohol and celebrity culture to government, sport and the arts - and to give them all the same quizzical, self-deprecating analysis that Montaigne himself might well have done. What sets Montaigne's 107 essays apart from just about any others past or present is their creator's open-mindedness and the breadth of subject matter he addresses: 'I enter into discussion and argument with great freedom and ease,' he wrote. 'No propositions astonish me, no belief offends me, whatever contrast it offers to my own. There is no fancy so frivolous and so extravagant that it does not seem to me quite suitable to the production of the human mind.A "' With that objective in mind, Kent sets out to examine the modern world through the eyes of perhaps the finest essayist of all time.« less