Who are your heroes? Most of us choose them young. First, by about age 12, we pick heroes from sports, music and fiction. These choices matter. “Most people are influenced far more than they would care to admit by novels, serial stories, films and so forth,” wrote George Orwell. Especially influential, he thought, were the books “that are read earliest in life. It is probable that many people who would consider themselves extremely sophisticated?.?.?.?are actually carrying through life an imaginative background which they acquired in childhood from (for instance) Sapper and Ian Hay” — or Harry Potter, or Superman.

Then, through about our early twenties, we choose our intellectual and political heroes — for me, as a future journalist, inevitably including Orwell. (The equivalent patron saint of budding libertarians is Ayn Rand.)