What is the proper amount of attention that free people in a democracy should give to politics? Forget it all, and avail oneself of society’s bread and circuses? Or read the newspapers every day and take seriously the wooden pronouncements of people like Francois Hollande? Indifference or obsession? Dalrymple would prefer the former, apparently, and yet…

The problem is that if you do not go to politics, politics will come to you.