It is quite possible, and beyond that most satisfactory, to lose one’s thoughts in consideration of the idea that the turbulently shifting great moments of history produce or recognise precisely the artists required to frame those occasions for present and future generations to understand and appreciate. Without Homer, ancient Greece would be but a rubble of interesting statuary and quite likely without Homer it all would have been paved over decades ago. Our knowledge of the clashing fortunes and misfortunes begotten of the industrial age begins (or at least should begin) with Dickens, just as the rise of America and the roots of its present fall from grace are all in the works of Fitzgerald, Faulkner and Sinclair Lewis. What are the dire lessons of Fascism without a viewing of Picasso’s Guernica, and so on and so forth. The Earth breeds the brilliant children that its peoples need. You can muse on this and at the end think, that was great fun…

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