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I wonder what they'd make of the world were they still around to see it.

My mother, the political scientist, saw World War II through the eyes of a child, only to shiver through the chill of the Cold War as an adult. Her brother, the journalist, who on his deathbed a quarter of a century ago lamented the creeping aggression in the society he was soon to leave.

The world they left was very different to the one that confounds us today. He died the year before Al Qaeda flew the hijacked aircraft into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon; she almost a year to the day after the US launched its disastrous invasion of Iraq. Both missed the advent of social media and its toxic effect on public discourse. And they were spared the relentless 24-hour news cycle, which was only in its infancy.

There were no influencers then and reality TV, with its manufactured "celebrities", was only just taking off - not that either would have bothered watching any of it. And they would have scoffed at any suggestion Donald Trump could step from the pages of trashy gossip magazines into the corridors of power. Indeed, I doubt they'd have known who he was.

My mother had watched with keen interest the collapse of the Soviet Union. But Vladimir Putin was a relative newcomer when she died, first elected in 2000, then re-elected in 2004. She'd have had no inkling that he'd manoeuvre himself into unassailable power and embark on a program of territorial expansion. I imagine she'd have been horrified by the serial defenestration, poisoning and imprisonment of his political rivals.

A celebrated motoring writer, my uncle had an abiding love of European - especially Italian - cars. I often wonder how he'd feel about the vehicles that infest our modern roads. Surely, the bloated........

© Canberra Times