Some Changes in My Lifetime: Good and Bad [1957]

THESE REMINISCENCES APPEARED on Russell’s eighty-fifth birthday in Everybody’s Weekly under the title “Hope and Fear”, 18 May 1957, pp. 9, 27 (B&R C57.18). No doubt in light of Russell’s previous contributions to this popular illustrated magazine (see H5), the editor of Everybody’s Weekly, Norman Edwards, had wondered in a letter of 24 January whether Russell might like to submit some new material. “In principle, I am quite willing to do one or more articles”, Russell had replied, “provided we can agree upon a subject or subjects. I do not know what sort of subject you have in mind. Perhaps you would be so kind as to give me some indication” (26 Jan. 1957, RA REC. ACQ. 441). Edwards complied with this request in his follow-up letter of 13 February (incorrectly dated as 13 July), which asked whether Russell, a few months ahead of his birthday, “would be interested in writing an article on the progress that has been made in this strange world of ours since you were born”. Russell accepted this commission at payment of one hundred guineas, so long as he might “mention not only things in which there has been progress, but also things in which there has been retrogression” (16 Feb. 1957). Before dictating his text to Edith ten days later, Russell wrote the following abstract in his own hand:

More change than at Barbarian invasion and rise of Islam Internal and External

At the same archival location as this outline and the dictated manuscript (RAI 220.022380) dated 26 February 1957 are two identical typescript carbons, one of which serves as the copy-text.