OK, 2007 is upon us, and the end of history, as in Francis Fukuyama’s fearless forecast of 1990, has turned out to be full of you-know-what. In fact, never in seven centuries, give or take a few, has this planet of ours been in more turmoil. Fukuyama is a great scholar, and he meant well,
Requiems for heavyweights: sporting history’s seven super-dupers who died in 2006 were, at 79, football’s Ferenc Puskas, cricket’s Fred Trueman (75) and Sir Clyde Walcott (80), US boxer Willie Pep (84) and his compatriot, double Olympian Bob Mathias (75), rugby’s sprinter Ken Jones (84), and Dr Kevin O’Flanagan (86), who played international tennis and golf
Q. Six months ago an acquaintance asked me to lunch in the country, apparently to discuss some business she might be able to put my way. I don’t drive and the journey there and back was gruelling, involving taking a tube, then a train and then a mix-up over where we had agreed to rendezvous.
Conversation is an art in which we all prefer to think we excel, and Stephen Miller has written a whole book on the subject (Conversation, Yale, £15), which turns out to be mostly about Samuel Johnson and David Hume, who never did meet and talk. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu comes into it too, and Mr
