‘Bill Gates is just a figurehead. I am actively engaged’

In the bookcase in George Soros’s South Kensington drawing-room, neatly lined up beside works on Kant, Adam Smith and Karl Popper, are multiple copies of Open Society, written by one of today’s aspiring philosophers: Soros himself. The literary line-up is testament to the Hungarian–American billionaire’s search for something that money can’t buy — acceptance at the same table as these great thinkers. But his cash has paid for a place on the same shelf, at least in his own home. And last week Soros was in London to talk about his latest book, The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror (Weidenfeld).

Despite giving away $5 billion of his personal fortune to propagate his beliefs, Soros will always be remembered for the $1 billion he made from the crisis in which sterling was forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992. He became known as ‘the man who broke the Bank of England’ and the tag has overshadowed everything he has done since. ‘I’m very happy to have had that billion dollars,’ he says, ‘and it hasn’t done Europe or Britain any damage. I’m actually very pleased with that particular incident.’

The financier turned philanthropist, now 75, began his career as a door-to-door salesman in Wales, progressed to the financial markets, and with his legendary Quantum Fund amassed a fortune for himself and his investors: a £1,000 stake in it 30 years ago would now be worth about £4 million. He is no longer actively involved with the fund, which is run by his two sons. But he is trying to change the course of history again — as a promoter of ideas. He has given up making money to concentrate on funding a network of foundations promoting democracy and open societies around the world. In the past his foundations encouraged democracy in Eastern bloc countries, but he will announce plans in the next few weeks to launch an Open Society Foundation in Western Europe — because he thinks the EU is failing.