What would be the impressions of a Minoan archaeologist, picking over a heap of mud in a London devastated by an atomic attack - a heap which yields him objects as disparate as a teddy bear, a Father Christmas, a Rembrandt, (was England full of monkeys, and at what epoch?), an Iron Cross, an income tax return... and so on? How would he sort them out historically and assign a purpose to them? Were the English believers in a bear totem? And was Father Christmas a sort of Zeus? The margin of possible error is disquieting, and should put us a little on our guard against the 'certain certainties' that T.S. Eliot refers to.

Lawrence Durrell