The Almighty has withdrawn his hitherto effusive regard for me and struck me down. My flight out here last Sunday was peaceful and uneventful. I read Nevil Shute’s new book On the Beach, a grisly description of a group of people left alive in Australia when the rest of the world has been annihilated by H-bombs. They are waiting for the spreading radioactivity to spread to them and wipe them out which, eventually, it does. It’s written with his usual […]

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