The passing of Jonathan Miller’s father Emanuel Miller — a very distinguished psychiatrist — was terrible. ‘His last words, as he reared up on his deathbed, were: “I’m a flop! I’m a flop!” ’ One should be cautious about being Freudian here — Emanuel might approve; his son wouldn’t; his son’s biographer might, slightly — but that is a hell of a sentiment to inherit. As theatre and opera director, author of learned papers in medicine and neuropsychology, TV presenter and public intellectual, quotable crosspatch and lightning-rod for English anti-intellectualism, Jonathan Miller looks like someone for whom not being a flop consumes a lot of anxiety.
He came out of the traps as not-a-flop with some energy. His early success was astonishing. While Miller was still an undergraduate, Harold Hobson of the Sunday Times wrote that ‘if the whole world is destroyed, but Mr Miller preserved, it will be possible to start the entire adventure over again.’
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