The truth is, of course, that history is not completed in modern commerce any more than philosophy is perfected in political economy. In other words, there is nothing timeless or God-given about filling stations and penicillin and plastic bags.

By pouring money and goods into devastated regions, foreign aid workers sometimes compound the disruption and debauch the survivors.

We generally write best of what we ourselves have seen.

Economists, like royal children, are not punished for their errors.

The dividing line between wish and need was never clear.

The world dominion of western thought, forms of organisation, technology and military force is not God-given, nor eternal, nor greatly appreciated by the rest of the world.

Since the attack on the United States on September 11 2001, and the US retaliation in Afghanistan and Iraq, there must be few people who have not felt a twinge of nostalgia for the cold war.