I was reading a Salman Rushdie column the other day and, not for the first time, agreeing with ninety-five percent of it. In fact, I agree with him so often these days I’ve almost stopped noticing it. But not quite: far away at the back of my mind, I still remember the Rushdie of the 1980s—reflexively leftist, anti-Thatcher, the works. The old line about the liberal mugged by reality goes tenfold for him: he’s a liberal whom reality has spent the last thirteen years trying to kill. I still have difficulties with his novels, not least the one that got him into all the trouble, but in his columns and essays at least he has no illusions.

I wonder, though, how he feels about his chums, the old comrades from the BBC arts shows and left-wing salons. Comparatively few liberals get mugged by reality, and among the grand panjandrums of the arts it’s rarer still. At the theater, indeed, one often...

 

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