The thoughts that shape my writing
Fragments of history, reflections on memory, and glimpses of the human thread that runs through it all.
Aristotle: The Philosopher Who Inspired Monty Python
I’m a man of a certain age and, like many students in the 1970s, I adored the zany, intellectual comedy of Monty Python. That’s why whenever I hear or think of the name Aristotle, like one of Pavlov’s dogs, I instantly add: ‘was a bugger for the bottle’.
It’s a line from The Philosophers’ Song, a gloriously silly pub singalong that managed to name-check most of Western philosophy between rounds of beer.
The Dangerous Art of Asking Questions
Growing up in south Wales, I never accepted what anyone told me at face value. I always wanted to know why. If it rained for days on end — which it frequently seemed to do — I wanted to know what caused it. I wasn’t especially bright. Just incurably curious. Rather like a 20th Century young Socrates!
The Man Who Thought Everything Was Made of Water
Next we move from one who found truth in stillness to one who found it in motion: Thales of Miletus, the man who thought everything was made of water.
The Buddha
Before Plato built his Republic or Descartes began doubting his own existence, the Buddha was already onto something: that maybe the mind is both the problem and the key.
Big Ideas (Some I Understand, Some I Don’t and Some That Make My Brain Explode)
At the time of writing this (2025), I’ve been on this lump of rock we call home for seventy-one summers. In January 2026, I’ll be entering my seventy-second winter, and I hope there are many more left. But who knows?