Alexander Chancellor

Long life | 31 December 2015

His spirit of optimism is a powerful impetus to good cheer as a new year begins

Mark Zuckerberg with his wife, Priscilla Chan (Photo: Getty) 
issue 02 January 2016

The Egyptian driver of a London minicab said almost nothing during our journey but dropped me off at my destination with the words ‘What do you think of the condition of the world at the moment?’ He didn’t think well of it himself, he added: and I could not but agree. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so uneasy, not even during the Cuban missile crisis. The threats to international order and stability are now so varied and so amorphous that it is difficult to know how they are to be confronted, and even more difficult to predict when or where the next horror will erupt.

But that, I suppose, gives us all the more need to be hopeful and to look on the bright side of life. Just before Christmas, a commission chaired by Baroness Butler-Sloss reported that Britain was no longer a Christian country and should stop behaving as if it was.

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