It was the
most sensitive of times, it was the crudest of times. It was the most
informal of times (all that cheerful use of first names), it was the
most impersonal of times (all those recorded messages). It was the
most tolerant of times, it was (where its own pieties were concerned)
the most conformist of times . . .

Someone once wrote a book—about the mid-nineteenth century, I
think—called The Age of Paradox. It is not a very revealing
title. Every age since the Old Stone Age has been an Age of
Paradox, just as every age has been an Age of Transition. But at
least we can fairly claim that no age has bristled with more
paradoxes than our own.

Take attitudes to the elderly. In principle we all abhor ageism;
but in a culture increasingly bent on jettisoning the past, ageism
can assume strange guises. Sometimes it comes dressed up as its
opposite.

The other day I went to visit a relative in hospital, a woman of
nearly ninety. Her granddaughter hadn’t been able to get there
and asked me to take a present she had bought—a newly published
anthology entitled A Book of Grandmothers. What gift could have
been more appropriate?

On my way to the hospital I dipped into the book, and the first
item I came across was a pep talk about the virtues of
masturbation. Directed primarily at grandmothers who had been
widowed or divorced, it