At age ten, Weber was already reading The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas, adventure novels by Karl May, poetry by Victor Hugo and Homer.
Returning to Britain, Weber entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge, studying French and European history under David Thomson and graduating with a BA in 1950.
[6] He remained at Cambridge to study for a PhD, but his dissertation thesis was rejected after the external examiner, Alfred Cobban of the University of London, gave a negative review, saying it lacked sufficient archival sources.
[8] He also wrote for several French popular newspapers and, in 1989, presented an American public television series, The Western Tradition, which consisted of fifty-two lectures of 30 minutes each.
Although other historians such as Henri Mendras [fr] had put forward similar theories about the modernization of the French countryside, Weber's book was amongst the first to focus on changes in the period between 1870 and 1914.
beginning with the ancients of the West and the Orient and, especially ... the Jews and earliest Christians," finding that "an absolute belief in the end of time, when good would do final battle with evil, was omnipresent," inspiring "Crusades, scientific discoveries, works of art, voyages such as those of Columbus, rebellions" and reforms including American abolitionism.
Weber proclaimed in "The Western Tradition" lectures of 1989[full citation needed]:[H]ere we are at the end of the 20th century with a lot of people lonely in a Godless world—and now they are denied not only God but the solid substance of judgment and perception...The world has always been disgracefully managed but now you no longer know to whom to complain.
[full citation needed] As an agnostic, Weber viewed the Bible primarily as an important piece of historical literature, calling it: "the epitome of wisdom, violence, high aspiration, and the hurtful achievements of mankind".