How I got my encyclopedic knowledge of current affairs

Seven bells. Pitch dark still. I descend the creaking wooden stairs in the darkness, let the dog out, make tea and toast, put a pan of porridge and the coffee pot on the stove and download the Times newspaper on to the iPad. I read it from cover to cover. Every news story and comment piece, the Nature Notes, Court Circular, the letters and Daily Universal Register, the TV guide and the weather report, in which I look carefully at the daily temperatures in cities around the world. Sometimes I jot down the daily ‘food for thought’ quotation at the foot of the Daily Universal Register. This morning’s, for example, is: ‘The accent of one’s birthplace lingers in the mind and in the heart as it does in one’s speech.’ (Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1678.) Rarely these days do I deliberately skip an article unless it is about cladding or cricket or written by Sir Max Hastings — though I very much enjoy his history books.