So I Was Smacked Up On The

Life, It Is True, Can Be Grasped In All Its Confused Futility Merely By Opening One's Eyes And Sitting Passively, A Spectator On The Stands Of History - But To Understand The Social Processes And Conflicts, The Interplay Between Individual And Group, Even The Physicality Of Human Experience, We Have Need Of Small-scale Models.

What The British Seem To Like Are Television Historians And Naturalists, Not Public Intellectuals. You Can't Help Feeling That's Because One Supplies Narrative And The Other Supplies Facts, And The British Are Traditionally Empiricists So They/we Have A Resistance To Theory And To Theoreticians Playing Too Prominent A Role In Public Life.

From Time To Time, As If Heaven-sent To Annoy, Someone Will Ask Me If I'm Self-disciplined When It Comes To My Work. I Usually Look Witheringly At Them And Snarl, 'what Do You Think?' I Mean, How Do You Imagine Anyone Writes A Quarter Of A Million Words A Year For Publication?

Most Of Us Have Had That Experience - At Around Puberty - Of Realising That, Despite Whatever Efforts We Put Into Our Chosen Sports, We Will Become At Best Competent.

Once The Working Classes Were In Chains, Now They're In Chain Restaurants.