My impression of Stephen is that he emerged fully fledged from the womb, or was plucked from his father’s thigh, like Dionysus, a god with whom he has from time to time dallied.
When I first met him, he was still pretty young. He was enormous, kindly, effortlessly charming, very funny and apparently omniscient, generously sharing with all and sundry his knowledge on a hundred thousand subjects, and all the possible tangents of each and every one of those hundred thousand subjects. So much knowledge inside that magnificent head, the head of a Habsburg Emperor, of a general, of a spymaster, of an archbishop, the knowledge pouring out of it almost incontinently.
“He is kindly, effortlessly charming, funny and apparently omniscient” Later, I met Stephen’s parents at a book launch…
