Glass

It seems a long time ago – a different lifetime, almost – since the 1980s: going to university; starting my first job; marriage. Grown-up at last, or about as grown-up as I ever managed. The passing of Lady Thatcher a couple of days ago brings it all back to mind: her premiership coincided with those formative years. The media coverage of her life has highlighted the highs and lows of those times: Britain dragged into a modern market economy at the expense of traditional industries; the privatisation of utility companies and selling off of council houses; poll tax riots, miners' strikes, disputes over the European Union, war in the South Atlantic. It is difficult to remember how confrontational politics was then (when we tend to think it is pretty confrontational now), although we are soon reminded by the vehemence of recent comments on Twitter and the Web.

How do you put all this into perspective? There comes a point when you can recognise the impact of key historical figures and events without necessarily coming to a conclusion whether they are good or bad. And perhaps it is naive to think of any significant events as being entirely good or bad: maybe things are inherently more mixed than that, are shades of grey; and what we actually get to know of them, of their motivations and consequences, are even greyer. Yet there are people who will treat half-formed opinions seen through a glass darkly as being absolute truths, justification enough for whatever course of action they want to pursue. Or maybe it's just a problem I have: everything to me looks grey: everything is glimpsed through that dark glass or unpolished mirror: now we know in part.

I have a friend who would frequently get worked up over the ancient Romans. The Greeks he was very fond of, the fount of all learning and all that. But the Romans were, despite their straight roads and under-floor heating, basically barbarians. I could not feel so passionately about them: the Romans simply were, and I never felt they could be dismissed out of hand, or, for that matter, put on a pedestal.