I confess (if I may use the word in this context) that I had little regard for the late pope. I took against him, as it were, early in his papacy when I saw his reaction to some Muslim outrage (or outrage committed by a Muslim), whose precise nature I now forget. The pope was in an airplane on ...
My reaction to world affairs veers between complacency and panic. Either it is the end of the world, or everything will continue as before. I have been through enough world crises to know that not all of them end in catastrophe; it does not follow, however, from the fact that I have so far always ...
A French antiquarian bookseller from whom I buy books from time to time sends them to me through the post with old-fashioned postage stamps on the packet. How pleased I am when I receive such a packet! Postage stamps are almost relics of the past, and I have long reached the age when relics of the ...
In his autobiography, John Stuart Mill describes an important moment in his life, a kind of intellectual and moral epiphany. Until that moment, Mill had devoted himself to various schemes of political, economic, and social reform, but suddenly he asked himself whether, if all the reforms that he ...
No doubt it is rather peculiar, but whenever I see a grain of rice left on a plate, or a few crumbs scattered on a tablecloth, I think of those who were taken prisoner by the Japanese during the war and nearly starved to death. One day, I think, I might be glad of that grain of rice or that ...
There was an article recently in The Washington Post that suggested that the great footballer Lionel Messi might do more for his sport (soccer) and his fame if he were less reticent about his private life, gave more interviews to the press and on television, and in general put himself about ...
H.L. Mencken once said that no one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public, but the American public of his time was full of Lorenzos the Magnificent by comparison with the British public of today. This public resolutely rejects all refinement or beauty, or the exercise of ...
Notwithstanding their evident differences, Britain and France are very similar in their juridico-political idiocies. Perhaps idiocy is not quite the right word, insofar as there might be method in the madness. The plan, if there were one, would be as follows: for the juridico-political elite so to ...
All things considered—my age, for example, and my unhealthy lifestyle—I have little, physically, to complain of. My only real problem is osteoarthritis of my hands, now somewhat deformed. The great Doctor Johnson used to take an objective observer’s interest in his own illnesses, finding ...
