"Looking back at the age of eighty-eight over the fifty-seven years of my political work in England, knowing what I aimed at and the results, meditating on the history of Britain and the world since 1914, I see clearly that I achieved practically nothing. The world today and the history of the human anthill during the last fifty-seven years would be exactly the same as it is if I had played pingpong instead of sitting on committees and writing books and memoranda. I have therefore to make the rather ignominious confession to myself and to anyone who may read this book that I must have in a long life ground through between 150,000 and 200,000 hours of perfectly useless work."

Leonard Woolf, from The Journey Not the Arrival Matters.

Open letter to King Charles

You played at Sasha's wedding and afterwards you went "back stage", a flight of cold, stone steps, put your head in the lap of a girl sitting there and asked her if it had been alright. Possibly, you lit a cigarette; I can't remember. I hope not. Well, was it alright? Are you kidding? It was electrifying! Which, of course, it was always going to be because Sasha doesn't swim in mediocre waters.

For no very good reason, Loveblood reminds me of Love's first album (Love): a beautiful essay in song-writing. Da Capo improved matters and Forever Changes remains to this day one of the seminal albums of the 1960s. So, young Charles, that difficult third album will be your challenge; and the challenge will be the greater because the beautiful first has gone before it. The second we will buy without a thought. The third we will devour, analyse, and compare. In our inadequacy, and our ordinariness, we long for those who rise and rise; we feast on their brilliance and thank our deities for the pleasure they give us. We know what you can give to us; it is less clear what we can give to you, apart from our applause, our loyalty and our love.

Note to readers: here is the link to Loveblood. Do the old-fashioned thing and buy it.