The Spectator’s Notes | 3 December 2005

One of the basic divisions in human character is between those who expect the imminent end of the world and those who don’t. This can take a religious form, but in modern times it often appears in other guises. In the early 1980s, the apocalyptists feared nuclear war. Martin Amis wrote that the idea of it made him feel sick, as if that were a knock-down argument against the Bomb. Today, when the danger from the Bomb is actually much greater because Pakistan has it, North Korea more or less has it and Iran is getting it, the millennial fear of it has not revived in the West, perhaps because the people most neurotic on the subject tend to be those with an obsessive suspicion of their own civilisation. The possible return of nuclear power will bring back their fear. For the rest of us, the word ‘nuclear’ has a warm, nostalgic feeling — evidence that the Western mind can solve the problems which it creates for itself.

George Best is ‘coming home’ to be buried in Belfast. But it is interesting how little Best was touched by the sectarian Troubles of his home town. In interviews he was always vague about his religious and political background. Best was from a Protestant fam- ily, and said that his parents were Free Presbyterians, but this does not seem to have inhibited a certain fondness for drink. He also remembered a religious rivalry between two local football teams, Glentoran and Linfield, the former being, he said, Catholic. In this he was mistaken. Both teams were overwhel- mingly Protestant. What was true, however, was that Glentoran was less deep-dyed. Each time their team scored a goal, the Glentoran fans used to tease Linfield by ostentatiously crossing themselves in Catholic fashion. Best came out of an oddly idyllic moment in the history of Belfast.