Diary 
David Runciman
Before he discovered literature in a friend’s apartment in New York, Bob Dylan’s connection to the world beyond the narrow one into which he was born came almost exclusively from the radio. The radio is usually on somewhere in the background of his memoirs, and it’s always broadening his horizons, letting him know what American music could sound like, in all its unexpected variety. Now he has his own radio show – he started broadcasting in the US last year – and it should be no surprise that it is deeply nostalgic for the music of his own youth. What’s more surprising is that the show doesn’t sound at all dated. This is one of the wholly unexpected blessings of Dylan’s later years: it turns out that he is a wonderful disc jockey. In fact, it’s hard to imagine how anyone could be better.
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David Runciman teaches politics at Cambridge. He is the author of Political Hypocrisy and co-author of Representation, published by Polity Press.
Other articles by this contributor:
Invented Communities · post-nationalism
A Bear Armed with a Gun · The Widening Atlantic
The Cattle-Prod Election · The Point of the Polls
He shoots! He scores! · José Mourinho
Why Not Eat an Eclair? · Why Vote?
Cricket’s Superpowers · Beyond the Ashes
Liars, Hypocrites and Crybabies · Blair v. Brown
This Way to the Ruin · the British Constitution
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