I was surprised, as one is, I think, whenever the tenuous thread of one's life suddenly connects, as friends, people one would have thought strangers. - Paul Scott

It is said that every seven years of your life you undergo a change which reflects itself in your attitude to your circumstances and to other people, and I think this may be true. If it is, then the change begins towards the end of a seven-year span, at the point, perhaps, where dissatisfaction with what you are doing and with where you are going sets in.

"I often look back now and regret that I never took my courage in both hands and went out into the world. That's really what a chap should do, Canning. Get out and look. Otherwise," again he paused, "Otherwise you never really see yourself, old man. And it's all so small and petty. A man isn't a man any longer."

Every so often there's a generation likes us, Ian. Our only raison d'être to be blown to pieces in a war we imagine we believe in ideologically.