What do those who struggle against power do when they seize power? What does the revolutionary do when the revolution triumphs? Why do those who call for independence and freedom take away the independence and freedom of others? And is it sane or insane to believe, as so many around us apparently do, in nothing? […]

She recognized the puzzlement on my face and asked me where my gohyang was, probably in effort to help my understanding. “I’m from Ulsan, Gyeongsang-do,” I told her. But I added that I didn’t feel much longing for Ulsan, that I didn’t even think about it very often. I had no desire to go back […]

‘Darling, now listen. You know about me being beautiful?’ ‘You’re all right.’ ‘No, Rudolph, please say I’m beautiful; it’s part of the thing.’ ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me you’re a beautiful female spy?’ ‘In a way, I was.’ ‘Yes, I’m quite sure you were. And that you have a Chief, but you don’t […]

For the first time since her arrival in the Middle East she felt all of a piece; Gentile and Jewess, Vaughan and Aaronson; she had caught some of Freddy’s madness, having recognized by his manner in the car, as they careered across Jerusalem, that he had regained some lost or forgotten element in his nature […]

After twenty minutes of waiting as instructed – in an unforgiving wind – a Bedford bus pulled up in front of Juliet. It was a single-decker and on its side it announced ‘Highland Tours’ and Juliet thought, crumbs – were they going to Scotland and shouldn’t someone have told her so she could have packed […]

We are foolish as teenagers. We say wrong things, do not know how to be modest, or less shy. We judge easily. But the only hope given us, although only in retrospect, is that we change. We learn, we evolve. What I am now was formed by whatever happened to me then, not by what […]

That year, 1972, was just the beginning. When I started reading the paper the three-day week, the next power cuts, the government’s fifth state of emergency were not so far ahead of us. I believed what I read, but it seemed remote. Cambridge looked much the same, and so did the woods around the Cannings’ […]