Seventy-five years ago, the tinkling of a spoon in a cup signalled the dawn of a new cultural epoch. After seven years of research at a laboratory in Switzerland, the scientist Max Morgenthaler had perfected the technique of spray-drying liquid coffee into a soluble powder. And so on 1 April 1938, the world’s first instant coffee, Nescafé, was launched and from then on instantaneity came to permeate almost every aspect of our lives…
ReadOur faults are no less real for being unchosen. What distinguishes us from machines is that we can do something about them, not that we created them in the first place.
ReadAs long as something remains logically possible, some people can’t help but wonder if their dream might become a reality, given enough desire or effort. This is exacerbated by the fact that our culture encourages people to dream big and believe that “impossibility” is simply the hobgoblin of negative minds…
ReadNo civilised person is supposed to make bonfires of books. ‘Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings,’ wrote the German poet Heinrich Heine in the century before Nazism. Burning books is a sacrilegious act, and the taboo against it particularly binds writers. So what was I doing in a Somerset field lighting a match under the 32 volumes of the Encyclopædia Britannica?
ReadLike many, I suffer from a mild form of imposter syndrome: the persistent or recurring feeling that one day I will be exposed as an incompetent fraud. I say “suffer” but actually I think some kind of fear of fakery is entirely healthy and appropriate. More often than not, people are where they are by a combination of talent and hard work, aided by a dash of luck and chutzpah. How can we be sure that in our own cases, what ought to be the dashes are not in fact the principal ingredients? …
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