Nick Harkaway

that Ronnie wanted his children to counterfeit the manners of the aristocracy and the elite class in the UK at the time was because that was how you got a better class of mark.

Oh, really?

I'm sure he told himself or told them that he just wanted them to be better than him.

But I have absolutely no doubt that he wanted them to be his doorways, his signers, his, you know, his access, right?

I think it's undeniable.

And I think, incidentally, I would throw in the contemporary British public school system, which taught emotional deceit at a very high level.

He was shipped off to boarding school at five.

And I was talking to someone who said, in that situation, you have to choose whether you love your family or you love the school.

And it's just less painful to love the school.

And those institutions turned out our colonial governors, our military commanders.

It was a machine for the creation of the British Empire.

And that was what Ronnie wanted to participate in.

It's what he wanted his sons to become.

Yeah, because stories were the currency around our table.

When I was growing up, if I came home from school, I had a story.

Dad would have something to share.

We'd swap stories as a way of getting to know each other.

If I came back from when I was at university, when I came home, what's the best story you've got?

Come on, let's have it.

What's been fun?