Every day the eye is subject to a thousand tiny shocks as a thousand industries compete for the eye-kick, the visual hook that will lock the consumer into product for that crucial second where the tiny - or not so tiny - leap of the imagination is made.

Twenty years is, after all, a long time. We are not the same people we were. Old friends, lovers, even family members: they are strangers who happen to wear a familiar face. We have no right to claim to know anyone after such a distance.

George Orwells 1984 frequently tops surveys of our greatest books: its not a celebration of poetic language. Its decidedly anti-literary, a masterpiece of personal and political narrative sequence. And its subject matter is crucial, because what 1984 shows is that language can be a dirty trick.

Perhaps writers should never be allowed to get together in a workplace context. It's not like studying computer science, after all. The emotions are at large, and are shared and are questioned. There is a vulnerability.

I've been a professional writer for 20 years, and there are contours in that time, crescents and troughs.

Rome is a place almost worn out by being looked at, a city collapsing under the weight of reference.

It is, of course, the first recourse of every elitist to see social barbarism in others.