One of the characteristics of the present age, no doubt a consequence of the expansion of tertiary education beyond the capacity of people to benefit from it, is the prevalence of intellection without intellect. Mr. Charles Norman, of this magazine, is kind enough sometimes (actually, quite often) ...

Most people are inclined to suppose that if there were justice in the world, they would be better off. This, of course, is the merest prejudice. Hamlet was, perhaps, nearer the mark when he said, “Use every man after his desert, and who shall ’scape whipping?” If this is itself an ...

In the struggle between ideology and reality, ideology often emerges victorious—for a time only, however, reality being that which cannot be indefinitely denied. As Horace said, albeit in Latin, “Though you drive out Nature with a pitchfork, yet she will return, victorious over your ignorant ...

Recently, I read a small masterpiece of Soviet literature (or at least a masterpiece of literature written in the Soviet Period, which is perhaps not quite the same thing). It was Sofia Petrovna by Lydia Chukovskaya, written from 1937 to 1940, its survival a little miracle in itself. Chukovskaya ...

Reading a newspaper headline recently—on my telephone, of course—I suddenly became aware of a terrible injustice that was about to be done to me. The headline proclaimed that 70 was the new 60, and that scientific research had borne this out. Of course, we hardly needed scientific research to ...

Flies are like sheep: They seem to follow their leader, without it being clear which of them is their leader. This was my conclusion from watching flies approaching the flypaper I hung in my bedroom recently. Our house in the country is invaded by insects every year, a different species, or at ...

When I saw video clips of the joyful toppling of statues of Bashar al-Assad, as well as the tearing from walls of his ubiquitous portrait, I wondered what it must be like to be a dictator and see images of yourself everywhere (not that I have any ambitions myself in that direction). Do you come to ...

You are old when the world has moved on beyond anything that you can understand or sympathize with. I am not referring here to technical advances that only an infinitesimal proportion of the population can ever understand, or to the blizzard of laws and regulations that leave even specialist ...

Speech is silvern, said the old proverb, but silence is golden; and notwithstanding the recent disgraceful attacks on free speech, I more often find myself longing for freedom from speech, for example on trains, than freedom of it. The banality of so much conversation, including my own, appalls me. ...

Some people keep reading matter in their lavatories, though whether for their own benefit or that of their visitors I have never been able to determine—nor have I ever asked. I suppose that it comes in handy if you’re constipated, though this is a problem from which, as yet, I have never ...