The same old song

T.S. Eliot liked to recall the time he was recognised by his London taxi driver. Surprised, he told the cabbie that poets weren’t often recognised. ‘I’ve an eye for celebrities,’ the driver replied. ‘I ’ad that Lord Russell in the back o’ the cab the other day. I said to ’im, “All right, then, Bertrand, so wossit all about?” And, you know what, ’e couldn’t tell me.’

I’ve always felt the story reflects well on the cabbie. While it may have been asking too much of Bertrand Russell to condense his philosophy into the length of a taxi journey, he surely ought to have been able to say something useful.

George Steiner is a public intellectual almost of Russell’s stature. Born in Paris to Viennese Jewish parents, he was taken to New York as a child in 1940, a month before the fall of France. Fluent from childhood in English, French and German, he was also taught by his father to read the Iliad in Greek at the age of six.