A Criminal History of Mankind
“G. Wells’s Outline of History, published in 1920. Since some of the parts were missing, I got the whole pile for a few shillings. It was, I must admit, the pictures that attracted me - splendid full-page colour illustrations of plesiosaurs on a Mesozoic beach; Neanderthal men snarling in the entrance to their cave; the giant rock-hewn statues of Rameses II and his consort at Abu Simbel. Far more than Wells’s text, these brought a breathless sensation of the total sweep of world history. Even to...day I feel a flash of the old magical excitement as I look at them - that peculiar delight that children feel when someone says, ‘Once upon a time ...’In 1946, Penguin Books republished ten volumes of Wells to celebrate his eightieth birthday, including the condensed version of the Outline, A Short History of the World. It was in this edition that I discovered that strange little postscript entitled ‘Mind at the End of Its Tether’. I found it so frustrating and incomprehensible that I wanted to tear my hair: ‘Since [1940] a tremendous series of events has forced upon the intelligent observer the realisation that the human story has already come to an end and that Homo sapiens, as he has been pleased to call himself, is in his present form played out.’ And this had not been written at the beginning of the Second World War - which might have been understandable - but after Hitler’s defeat.MoreLess
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