Crisp and brave

Among my guests last weekend as I read Lord Mandelson’s book was Ben, aged two and a half.

Among my guests last weekend as I read Lord Mandelson’s book was Ben, aged two and a half. Ben’s language skills are precocious, but he is passing through a stage, as some infants do, of preferring to speak in the third rather than the first person. Thus ‘Ben wants an ice cream’; or ‘Ben was a bit disappointed’. Once, even, he declared: ‘Ben’s quite tired’ (thoughtful pause), ‘he said.’ If the unexamined life is indeed not worth living, this child has taken the lesson to heart.

Peter Mandelson, who has called his memoir The Third Man, might have benefited from following Ben’s lead. He might have written in the third person. Had he penned, as it were, his biography rather than his autobiography, the logic of the grammar itself might have forced him to confront questions and admit to talents that the ‘I’ makes eccentric.