I don’t have anything against academic work, a lot of really important thought goes on within academia, or at least used to when the pressure was off. Some of the most important thought in the twentieth century happened when people had the time and space to think without the immediacy of some newspaper deadline.
So I don’t disparage it. But what has tended to happen in academia is that it has become what the kids on my estate call ‘up itself’. What matters to me is not only trying to think
new things and say new things but also trying to reach
new places. It seems valuable
to try and break down the
boundary between an academic and a more public realm.
