Ian on Sunday

Instantaneous, computer-driven communication is becoming a curse, not a boon. It was supposed to free us; it is enslaving us.

Some time ago when our young son was struck by agonising abdominal pains in the middle of the night and we had to rush him to Emergency at York Central Hospital in Toronto.

A man is murdered, a woman beaten and raped, a child horribly abused, a business robbed, a home terrifyingly invaded.

The staff and members of the History Department of the University of Guyana used to produce a feature in Stabroek News called History This Week.

My father died twenty years ago at the age of 89.

The writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed – love and honour and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.

My heart has grown heavy and heavier yet in recent times, as I have contemplated what seems to be the fading of the dream of West Indian unity.

A long time ago when I was with GuySuCo there was an occasion when I found myself growing irritated because my secretary was urging me to find time for an interview with an old man, a pensioner from the old sugar times, who had been trying to see me for a couple of days. 

Why does anyone keep a diary?  For a man conscientious about his career perhaps it is in order to keep a record of his mounting success and developing ambition. 

Sveinsson Knut, Canute the Great, King of England from 1016, King of Denmark from 1018 and King of Norway from 1030 until he died in 1035, was perhaps the most successful and effective of the early rulers of England.

In any given situation we assume that people, including ourselves, will act sensibly.

One of the worst aspects of the self-righteous is that those most guilty of it most vociferously deny that they are guilty at all.

It is tragic to see a great nation bringing itself to its knees.

In a vibrant democracy elections should be a cause for celebration, an ever welcome occasion regularly marking the successful outcome of what in any country’s history has always been a long struggle to overcome authoritarian, and often brutal, rule.

In a long life I have on a number of occasions been asked to address various groups graduating from school or university or making the transition from one stage of life to another – for instance, new recruits in a company or first-time members of a national sports team.

I find it difficult to convince friends – or anyone – that poetry is worth reading.

My tutor at Cambridge, Professor Nick Hammond, authority on the history of ancient Macedonia and on the life of Alexander the Great, used to coach me on what he called “exercises of the mind.”

There are few problems in Guyana which are more intractable than the problem of bureaucracy in all its deadly guises.

In a recent column I mentioned Nick Hammond who was my tutor at Cambridge.

These days, as increasing age makes the discovery of new lands much less likely, it remains perfectly possible to voyage in the mind as adventurously as ever by reading books and talking to good friends.