In his weekly Takimag column, our quiet doctor expresses his longing for a more muted world in which he can read a book in peace in a café or be heard by the person he is dining with at a restaurant without having to yell.

The English have always taken their pleasures sadly, but now they take them first noisily, then antisocially, then forgetfully. Several times I have heard young people claim to have had a wonderful time the night before, the evidence for which is that they can remember nothing whatever of it. On this view of things, death is the final, eternal nightclub.