What We Can Know

by Ian McEwan

However, our biographers, historians and critics, whose subjects were active from about 2000 onwards, are heirs to more than a century of what the Blundy era airily called ‘the cloud’, ever expanding like a giant summer cumulus, though, of course, it simply consisted of data-storage machines. We have inherited almost two centuries of still photography and film. Hundreds of Francis Blundy lectures, interviews and readings were recorded and remain available by way of the Nigerian internet. All his newspaper and magazine reviews and profiles exist in digital form. In 2004, when the Blundy phones became cameras, pictures of the Barn, its interior and the surrounding countryside proliferated. Neither he nor Vivien was active on social media accounts, but they sent thousands of digital messages during the later years of their lives. These track daily trivia, give an accurate record of friends and acquaintances, of poems completed, and trace the rise and dip of mood. They tell us of Vivien’s sorrows and regrets and all she wanted to let her sister Rachel and close friends know about them. We too can watch the daily news that troubled her contemporaries, the diverting scandals, the ancient sporting triumphs. We know everything that passed between Francis and his agent, publishers and translators, accountant, doctor and solicitor. Even his and Vivien’s browsing habits are now obtainable. Messages sent by end-to-end encryption have been laid bare. As our dean once said in a speech, ...