But once upon a time, we could play shove ha'penny, and read a penny dreadful, and sing a song of sixpence, and take the King's shilling; and once up… - Bernard Levin

It is the fact that the longing for freedom is not just embedded in every true soul's heart.

As a child he had been brought up in the grim backstreets of 1930s Somers Town (between St Pancras and Euston stations) by his mother and her parents — Jewish refugees from Lithuania. His father had walked out on them when Bernard was three. That early betrayal, I always felt, explained a lot about why he stayed a bachelor. It was as if he used his intellect to dazzle because he found it difficult to communicate, or commit, on an emotional level.

I became a journalist by accident, and stayed one. Just as well; I have no other talent whatever, even in the most modest and rudimentary form. I can't paint or compose or write novels; I couldn't be a businessman or financier; I would be impossible as a teacher and a disaster as an actor.