War, war, war and Mark Morris

Working in a newspaper, it sometimes seemed as though there was nothing but war.

At the TLS we can normally turn our head aside - at least a little way aside.

But this week? No chance.

We have our Berlin Wall issue - why it came down, why no one quite anticipated it and how much any single individual can in decent truth be praised or blamed.

I've also been reviewing the neo-con scholar Donald Kagan's latest thoughts on Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War for the Wall Street Journal.

And I have begun Miranda Carter's triple biography of George V, Wilhelm II and Nicholas II, which asks us to judge which of these mediocre cousins who took Europe into the First World War was most culpable. Philipp Blom is our TLS reviwer of this fine book, excellent for the Christmas list, who sees Nicholas as just about the worst of the three and highly praises Carter’s "insistent gaze into characters that might have sprung from an imagination as merciless as Flaubert’s and as absurd as Gogol’s".

With men like these, what role has there ever been for diplomats?

 Sir Jeremy Greenstock, UK ambassador to the UN during the Iraq war of 2003, has been prevented so far from publishing his own book of praise and blame for Blair, Bush and Saddam. In this war edition of the TLS he considers  Sir Ivor Roberts’s new edition of Satow’s Diplomatic Practice, a "treasure" for separating the calls of "duty from stupidity" and understanding how matters ought to be handled by men of reason.

The only ninety minutes with any sort of peace came at Sadlers Wells. But even behind Mark Morris's extraordinary new dance work to music by Charles Ives, there were the sinews of soldiers.

Unlike The Guardian's Judith Mackrell, who gives a fine 'five-star' account this morning, I have no form in putting words to the experience of contemporary dance. Often I am bored by it, sometimes very bored. This time I was somehow wide open to the experience. It was like the time I once held a lion cub.

Perhaps it was the way that I had spent rest of the week.