When I was a young man, a junior lecturer in History I spent a lot of time with my head of department who was retiring at the end of my first year. We taught a course together called The Philosophy of History. We had one student, and he wasn’t interested in philosophy. Somehow he was allowed to do his family history as a means of qualifying for his degree. The Head of Department didn’t care. I did. I’d been brought to the university to teach this one course in particular. During one of our long sessions he told me something which shocked me. Out of the blue he told me: “Mr Kiely, you will never make a name for yourself or achieve greatness unless you neglect your family.” He was a highly respected historian within a narrow community of academics and locals. Obviously he was regretting his act of abandonment as he faced his declining years. He had remarried. I don’t know if he’d neglected her as well. I determined that I would not do the same. But I did. And I find it hard to see how you can rise to the top of your profession without devoting hours and years to your field. Karl Marx and James Joyce had wives and large families who followed them from Cheap Rooms to cheap rooms, living like gypsies, in poverty. Groupies. Just think, if Karl and James had been new males, we wouldn’t have the Soviet Union or Ulysses.