What on earth is wrong with Ian Rankin's memory?

[tree_and_leaf]

It was fascinating to research the 1980s. I was at university then and thought myself political, yet I had forgotten so much: protests against US missiles on British soil; Greenham Common; animal rights; acid rain; global cooling; Reagan's star wars technology; the threat of nuclear attack; unrest in Ireland;* unrest in Scotland …

Or was he living under a rock? I remember all of that, with minimal prompting (certainly not research), and I was at primary school.

Although I'll admit I don't remember any unrest in Scotland comparable to the Troubles...


* How the hell can you forget the Troubles?

Comments

[sophia_gratia]

Aliens. Which is my explanation, lately, for anything I can't otherwise account for. Aliens.

More seriously, perhaps this is just a kind of affected male-intellectual pose – 'I've been too busy being a writerly writer who writes to notice the world around me.' More generously, maybe he means that he forgot what it was like to live those things – not that they happened, but the felt experience of being in that political atmosphere.

[tree_and_leaf]

Either that, or the only politics he was interested in at uni was the legalisation of drugs and he did a bit too many... (Your generous explanation may be right too, although I must admit I've always found Rankin a bit irritating).