Equally, we require a collective past - hence the endless reinterpretations of history, frequently to suit the perceptions of the present.

We make choices but are constantly foiled by happenstance.

I am addicted to arrivals, to those innocent dawn moments from which history accelerates.

I'm now an agnostic but I grew up on the King James version, which I'm eternally grateful for.

If people don't read, that's their choice; a lifelong book habit may itself be some sort of affliction.

I'm not a historian but I can get interested - obsessively interested - with any aspect of the past, whether it's palaeontology or archaeology or the very recent past.

It seems to me that everything that happens to us is a disconcerting mix of choice and contingency.