I stepped into the luxurious hall with – thankfully already familiar – the sensation that I had the privilege of touching something truly cultivated, civilization in its least pretentious guise, the elevating voice of literature, that sort of thing. I’m not joking, nor do I think I’m exaggerating –…

I don’t know whether someone told me this or I read it somewhere, but tonight one of those wise-sounding phrases has been spinning around in my head – the kind of thing you’d proudly serve up at a dinner table. It goes like this: “Nothing ages you faster than fulfilled dreams.” (In a more radical…