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

We open our mouths and out flow words whose ancestries we do not even know. We are walking lexicons. In a single sentence of idle chatter we preserve Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse: we carry a museum inside our heads, each day we commemorate peoples of whom we have never heard.

And in another year everything will be different yet again. It is always like that, and always will be; you are forever standing on the brink, in a place where you cannot see ahead; there is nothing of which to be certain except what lies behind. This should be terrifying, but somehow it is not.

Language tethers us to the world; without it we spin like atoms.

I didn't think I had anything particular to say, but I thought I might have something to say to children.

All history, of course, is the history of wars.

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