We All Need A Past - That's

The Place Didn't Look The Same But It Felt The Same; Sensations Clutched And Transformed Me. I Stood Outside Some Concrete And Plate-glass Tower-block, Picked A Handful Of Eucalyptus Leaves From A Branch, Crushed Them In My Hand, Smelt, And Tears Came To My Eyes. Sixty-seven-year-old Claudia, On A Pavement Awash With Packaged American Matrons, Crying Not In Grief But In Wonder That Nothing Is Ever Lost, That Everything Can Be Retrieved, That A Lifetime Is Not Linear But Instant. That, Inside The Head, Everything Happens At Once.

I'm Not A Historian But I Can Get Interested - Obsessively Interested - With Any Aspect Of The Past, Whether It's Palaeontology Or Archaeology Or The Very Recent Past.

Wars Are Fought By Children. Conceived By Their Mad Demonic Elders, And Fought By Boys.

Getting To Know Someone Else Involves Curiosity About Where They Have Come From, Who They Are.

All History, Of Course, Is The History Of Wars.