“To understand the man,” Napoleon Bonaparte is reputed to have said, “you have to know what was happening in the world when he was 20.” Boney turned 20 just as the French Revolution was kicking off, which makes sense, but I’m not sure this rule is flawless: when I was 20 Labour were unbeatable, the economy was booming and the world was at peace – all of which feels about as relevant to the current world and my opinion of it as The Chronicles of Narnia.
There is, nonetheless, the grain of a point here: we are all shaped by the times through which we live. Consider the baby boomer generation, born in the late 1940s or 1950s, who still dominate British politics today.
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