Long life | 21 April 2012

I am lucky with my brother John. Although he is 12-and-a-half years older than me, he doesn’t patronise or seek to undermine me. On the contrary, he is wholly supportive of my modest endeavours, whatever they may be. Although, at the end of a successful and varied career as a publisher, author and bookseller, he is still dealing in old books, he doesn’t do as much as he used to. He will be 85 this summer and suffers from Parkinson’s Disease. But he takes a keen interest in whatever I get up to, and he shuffles off to the newsagent to buy any publication that I have written something for. Then he usually rings up to say something nice about it.

Elder brothers are not always like this, as the Pope and the leader of the Labour party can testify. Perhaps, if I had ever achieved any sort of eminence, my brother might be feeling less benign; but I doubt it.