ABSTRACT

In a fit of bombast all too typical of contemporary features journalism, Bryan Appleyard of the Sunday Times asserts that

Omnipotent, pretentious, unsubstantiated and obvious: all these things are true of Appleyard’s opening paragraph. Facing the millennium, and seeking to account for the previous thousand

years of human endeavour, he obviously wishes to utter something grandiose, exaggerated even. Yet, for all our recognition of this, there also appears to be an unavoidable kernel of truth in what he says. Human beings, especially after the development of the verbal faculty, have constantly told stories, presented events and squeezed aspects of the world into narrative form.