Every morning as I woke up I reached for my radio. A cheerful Home Counties voice announced: 'Sunny skies in Buenos Aires, Toronto, Calgary and Tokyo: overcast in Dublin, Rome and Ankara: rain in London, Athens, Nairobi and Frankfurt.' As South Africa gets the weather, so it gets its news: in gobbets of fact, fragmented beyond all hope of comprehension.

LRB 3 July 1986 | PDF Download