I Don't Believe That One Should Have

I Was Born Accidentally. I Lived Accidentally In London. We Nearly Migrated To New Zealand. So Much Of My Life Has Been A Product Of Chance, I Can't See A Meaning In It At All.

Reality Is A Powerful Solvent.

I Started Work On My First French History Book In 1969; On 'socialism In Provence' In 1974; And On The Essays In Marxism And The French Left In 1978. Conversely, My First Non-academic Publication, A Review In The 'tls', Did Not Come Until The Late 1980s, And It Was Not Until 1993 That I Published My First Piece In The 'new York Review.'

There Is Nothing To Be Said For Being Crippled. You Don't See The World Better Or Clearer, Nor Do You Develop Some Special Set Of Skills By Way Of Compensation.

Undergraduates Today Can Select From A Swathe Of Identity Studies.... The Shortcoming Of All These Para-academic Programs Is Not That They Concentrate On A Given Ethnic Or Geographical Minority; It Is That They Encourage Members Of That Minority To Study Themselves - Thereby Simultaneously Negating The Goals Of A Liberal Education And Reinforcing The Sectarian And Ghetto Mentalities They Purport To Undermine.