Gore Vidal was the Virgil of American populism

America’s Montaigne, Gore Vidal, was born 100 years ago today. Born Eugene Luther Vidal, this Virgil of American populism entered the world on 3 October 1925 (‘Shepherds quaked’, he later said, describing his arrival in his typical, wildly egotistical way).

His father, Eugene Luther Vidal – after whom he was named – was a former quarterback, Olympian and the founder of three commercial airlines. While he worshipped his father, Vidal had a hateful relationship with his mother, Nina Gore, a beautiful monster who would go on to marry two more times following her divorce from Vidal senior.

Vidal’s formative friendship was with Nina’s father, Thomas Pryor Gore, the blind senator from Oklahoma. Young ‘Gene’ read him Voltaire, Gibbon, Shakespeare. He had read Livy in translation by the age of s