Brain Power

 

Reading Juval Noah Harari’s latest article published in the

Financial Time and entitled “Lessons from a year of Covid”, I

am as usual overcome by the sheer brilliance of the man’s

thought and the clarity of his expression. In this respect, if in no other,  he

reminds me of a very different kind of writer - George Orwell.

A human being is the sum of many attributes: health or the lack

of it, family circumstances, temperament with which I would

include will power.

That’s all very well but let’s not forget the

quality of a person’s brain. I myself am the owner of a second-

class brain, as formalised by the award of a 2/2 (hons., mind

you) from the History Department of Durham University, and as

made clear to me in a roundabout sort of way by my moral

Tutor, Roger Anstey, when he suggested I should seek a job in

the police force.

My father, by way of contrast and by all accounts, was a highly

intelligent man and had a first-class degree from Trinity College

Cambridge to prove it. He spoke seven languages as opposed

to the two, increasingly one, that is all I can muster. He was

instrumental in setting up the JIC and worked alongside

Churchill in the Cabinet War Rooms. He was part of the British

Delegation to the San Francisco Conference, called to set up the

United Nations. The disappearance over the Atlantic of the

plane carrying the delegation back to Britain cut short what

looked like being a glittering career.

So much for brain power, but what about “family circumstances,

temperament and will power”? I am only speculating here but I

think that his marginal, Bohemian, fly-by-night early life

inculcated in him a fierce desire to succeed, to become a

member of the establishment.

These same attributes, it seems to me, have conspired to

make me sleep-walk through life.