Paul Finch's letter from London

摘要

There is an exchange in an early John le Carre novel where one character says (to the George Smiley figure) that he loves music and melody, but no sooner has the music ended than he forgets what he has just heard. 'You should go into politics,'replies Smiley. I have been thinking about amnesia, prompted not least by the James Review of school building procurement. When the report came out, I remarked in these pages that it was a history-free zone, in which the record of attempts to produce workable design and construction systems for this building type went unremarked. Why?