My first memory of a historic event is from 2001. I was nine years old and just home from school. Sitting in front of the TV in my mum’s living room I watched an aeroplane fly out of a cloudless blue sky and into the side of a tall building in New York. Then another aeroplane did the same thing. It looked like the end of the world.
The terror attacks on 9/11 were a fittingly apocalyptic introduction to current affairs. The politics of the 21st century is haunted by intimations of looming world-historic crisis. That memory of two apparently invulnerable skyscrapers (the archetypal image of capitalism) collapsing into clouds of dust set the tone for the next two decades of financial disaster, populist demagogues and, most frighteningly, climate crisis.
Content from our partners
