Lego – I can’t bring myself to capitalise it more than once – was born today in 1958, when it was granted its Danish patent. Parents have been performing staccato hops over the plastic bricks ever since.

I will not be alone in remembering a Lego set as being an object of endless desire. As a Christmas or a birthday approached, my mind was stirred not with gratitude for the son of God, or for my parents having brought me into the world, but with anticipation for the hollow rattle of a rectangular box hidden somewhere in a wardrobe. Children don’t question why they receive gifts on their birthdays rather than give them. 

How I’d dream of the worlds the Lego would unfold. Poring over catalogues, or looking at displays in shops, there was the newly minted creation the box was designed to make – an aircraft, a spaceship, perhaps a scene from Star Wars. And then there was the promise of all the other creations that the box of bricks unlocked. The only limit was imagination!

We will never be able to create the Lego sets our imagination half apprehended

As the big day approached, one sensed, like Wordsworth’s inner child intimating immortality, that the world of........

© The Spectator