Ian on Sunday

I find it hard to believe that Donald Trump – whose candidacy was declared a year ago seemed a bad joke – is the Republican nominee for the presidency of the United States.

I have changed my mind about limited over cricket. When this slash and burn form of the game began to emerge prominently I was accustomed to dismiss it as a superficial and corrupt version of the great game.

Elie Wiesel, Auschwitz survivor, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, died recently at the age of 87.

Age has slowed me down but at least no day goes by without reading bringing me the fascinating and penetrating insights of other minds.

One of the things I enjoy the most is to browse in good bookstores and buy a stock of books to read and add to my library.

I find it hard to understand why most people never, literally never, read poetry.

I wonder what it would be like to exclude sport completely from one’s life for, say, one year?

Recently I read two poems which I want to share without much commentary – partly because they speak for themselves.

There is a never-ending battle against those who think – no, who are sure – they know what is best for us.

I like to tell the story of Tony Judt. Tony Judt was a writer on recent world history whom I greatly admire.

The work of the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (1888-1953) is hardly known to English-speaking peoples.

Everywhere in the world the ordinary man in the street has been brainwashed into supposing that the only thing that matters is economic success.

My wife’s garden is as much a work of art as a painting by a master spirit or a poet’s inspired sonnet or a perfectly composed piece of music.

I do not get the impression that the governance of the world is good or that it is getting better.

In a book written on Voltaire I learn of his beloved mistress Madame de Chatelet.

Concern is constantly expressed about break-downs in the nation’s infrastructure. Previous long-term economic malaise led to wide-spread structural deterioration which is with us still.

As I grow older – 83 tomorrow – bloodied but not completely bowed, a passage from Shakespeare comes naturally but ominously to mind.

When I was young I was ready and eager to follow the advice given by Terence, the Roman poet, a long, long time ago: “I am a man,” he wrote, “and therefore anything that any man does should interest me.”

Karl Popper, one of the greatest thinkers of his, or any, age, was modest in expressing his philosophical findings.

I know from our newspapers, and from many a conversation, that our political masters and mistresses are going at each other in Parliament and elsewhere as they always have and, apparently, always will, except for Sam Hinds who I find maintains a calm dignity even in his  most adversarial communications which no one else seems able to achieve.