A TV interviewer recently asked Stephen Hawking, author of A Brief History of Time, ‘What existed before the universe began?’ and was snubbed. ‘That’s a meaningless question.’ Oh no, it isn’t. Hawking may be an expert mathematician and a distinguished physicist but he evidently knows little of the uses of English and the problems of
I have long thought that Alan Greenspan would have made a passable Dalai Lama. Those gnomic utterances, that air of inner calm, that instant access to a deep well of understanding…. The faithful have come to accept that the chairman of the United States Federal Reserve Board is the embodiment of power and wisdom, and
My old tutor, A.J.P. Taylor, used to say, ‘The only lesson of history is that there are no lessons of history.’ Not true. History does not exactly repeat itself, but there are recurrent patterns. And the historian learns to look for certain signs. He asks, What is the prevailing orthodoxy, in any field, at a
The results tell their own story: Tony Blair 3, Conservative party 0; Tony Blair 0, Rodney Leach 3. As David Cameron and David Davis wrestle for the tattered armband which has already passed from captain to captain three times in eight years, they should ask themselves if they are in the right league. Their apparently
Sometimes I feel like a doctor in Chekhov: worn out, prematurely balding, old before my time and utterly superfluous. The trouble is that I’m not surrounded by Mashas, Irinas and Yelenas, but by Lees, Dwaynes and Craigs. As for birch trees, mandolins and tables set for tea, there’s not a one to be seen. On
It was a man in my club who first enthused to me about the special attractions of Skype. Given the normal boundaries of clubland conversation, this might suggest to those unfamiliar with the name that Skype is either a shooting estate in the Highlands or a dominatrix in Bayswater. But mine is an enlightened sort
An actuary’s life is more fun than it looks. You can make everyone’s flesh creep. Tell them all that their pensions are about to disappear into a black hole. Only the other day some financial astronomers measured the hole at a negative £130 billion and caused a most satisfactory flap. Could our pension funds really
Boots, Boots, Boots, Boots, moving up and down again — no discharge in the war …. Just another change of strategy and an alliance with Alliance. Perhaps it will work better than in-store chiropody. Salients have come and gone, casualties mount, the line is rectified, and commanders succeed one another like British generals in the
The bipolarity of science and the humanities has always been a false and inhibiting distinction. Now the enmity between what C.P. Snow called ‘the Two Cultures’ is coming to an end. It has lasted 200 years. Before that, knowledge was seen as a whole, a continuum. A seer like Newton probed into all subjects, albeit
Why do people insist on leading such terrible lives? Why do they choose misery when contentment is so easily within their grasp? Why is complete disaster so attractive, and modest success so repellent? This, surely, is the question that any unprejudiced observer of British life must ask himself. Personally, I think that soap operas have
Taking Holy Communion the other day, I reflected how grossly physical religious observance is, even though the progress of humanity tends to turn its more primitive aspects into symbolism. Occasionally I participate in a Jewish Sabbath meal, and find it a calm and decorous occasion, religious ritual at its most civilised. But it is important
Everyone seems to be talking about bicycles. This week’s eye-catching initiative from the Department for Transport is a scheme to turn Brighton, Aylesbury, Derby and Darlington into cyclists’ utopias, at a cost of £1 million per town. Meanwhile, more and more people have taken to cycling in London since the July bombings — an observation
If you want to discombobulate a Eurocrat, try calling him a Thatcherite. Gert-Jan Koopman, the European Commission’s otherwise articulate director of industrial policy and economic reform, threw up his hands in silent horror when I lobbed the epithet at him, though I meant it as a compliment. The game in Brussels these days — so
To someone of my age, who has seen the world and now wants only repose and beauty, Lake Como is the perfect place. I do not know how many times I have visited it in the last two decades, but over 100 watercolours (not counting the ones I have given away or sold) testify to
His party hoped that Kenneth Clarke as Chancellor would deliver the elusive ‘feelgood factor’ that would somehow win them the election. When would it come through? ‘2 May 1997,’ he told them. He was right. The election was held and lost on 1 May, his successor got off to a flying start, and the factor
An intellectual is someone who thinks ideas matter more than people. If people get in the way of ideas they must be swept aside and, if necessary, put in concentration camps or killed. To intellectuals, individuals as such are not interesting and do not matter. Indeed individualism is a hindrance to the pursuit of ideals
I have mixed memories of New Orleans. The hospitality was gracious and the cuisine was fine, but there was a pervasive whiff of something rotten which must have a bearing on the city’s lack of preparedness for the present disaster. I once spent an afternoon in the police headquarters hearing about efforts to eliminate corruption
The long line of young women outside Marks & Spencer, arms folded modestly across their chests as they wait for their brassieres to arrive, is a standing rebuke to the European Single Market. Even Peter Mandelson, now installed as commissioner in charge of trade, is talking of a glitch. It is, in fact, the by-product
Nr Pézenas, Departement de L’Hérault Random thoughts from mid-August abroad; not that they should be all that random. Now that BBC News 24, Sky and CNN can be viewed in the deepest Midi, where we are, and several British newspapers print ‘same day’ editions in Marseilles, which are on sale at 8.30 a.m. in our
It is all the fault of the fairy who came, uninvited, to Gordon Brown’s christening. Beside the scowling infant’s Moses basket, his godparents’ gifts of industry and ambition were assembled when this glittering creature approached him with a parcel of her own. ‘See, little man,’ she told him, ‘I’ve brought you the great gift of