There was one emollient nostrum he liked: things will never be as good as we hoped or as bad as we feared. But imagine showing a well-meaning Edwardian gent a history of the twentieth century’s first sixty years. The combined mega-deaths of Europe, Russia and China would cause him to buckle and weep. Enough! Those angry or disappointed gods in modern form, Hitler, Nasser, Khrushchev, Kennedy and Gorbachev may
