Love your enmities

Grudges make the world go around, according to Sophie Hannah. They are ‘an important and fascinating part of human experience’, which ought to be ‘protective, life-enhancing and fun’. I think this overstates the case somewhat, as I can’t see any pleasurableness, though I am aware that my own ability to harbour resentments is possibly pathological and blood-soaked.

The first thing I do each day is scan the obituary pages to see if any enemy has met with a fatal accident — and I fully understand Auden’s line about hearing with satisfaction, much later in life, of ‘the death by cancer of a once hated school master’. Not that being dead lets anyone off the hook. I still seethe about the little character actor who, though a paedophile known to the authorities, hired lawyers to persuade a judge that this was an inadmissible irrelevance, and that he could still sue me for libel to protect his reputation.