Intelligence in the service of love
Saint-Exupéry is one of the most lapidary writers I’ve come across, particularly when commenting on vast human complexities such as love, peace, or war.  I liked this pithy and purposeful view of the validity and value of intelligence. Intelligence is valid...
They were not sad people
It’s a few years since I read Steinbeck’s account of his visit to the Soviet Union with the photographer Robert Capa. A wonderful book full of humour and empathy. Among the many quotations I jotted down was this one, concerning the time they spent in...
What’s the point?
The eternal question. We can’t know what the point is, nor even if there is one. Â But in so far as we may need to believe that there is a point to it all, I liked the response given by the writer Philip Pullman: more consciousness, by whatever creative or benign...
Pushing the boundaries
Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, puts our relatively short-termist parochialism in stark contrast to that of our forebears, who despite multiple constraints of which we are free, were able to conceive and implement long term projects which they wouldn’t see...
Remember Alfonso!
How are you doing with the new year resolutions? Do they feel long ago and fallen by the wayside, after the first burst of the year has moved into the realities of daily life and human frailty? It happens to me regularly, but I have another bigger resolution, which...Yes, sign me up!
