Without belief, can we go on cursing our enemies – or blessing our friends?

Has the power to curse lost its meaning for modern man? Might we, in losing it, lose something precious: the power to bless?

I was made to think about this last week, in Bristol, recording for later broadcast a couple of programmes in a series I present for BBC Radio Four. Off the Page is a modest little affair in which three writers discuss with each other and with me the short columns I have commissioned from them on a single, simple subject. Each week we take a different topic and I invite different writers (some famous, some new or unknown) to join me in talking and writing about it. The result is discursive, very informal, sometimes rambling, often sharp, never thoughtless or dim. At its best it is like half an hour with The Spectator.

I learn so much from my guests: what they think makes me think. Indeed, so absorbing are their thoughts that it sometimes slips my notice that I am presenting a radio programme and I find myself staring into the middle distance, rapt in thought as my worried guests wonder what they’re supposed to do next.