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 Pluralism and the Personality of the State, The Politics of Good Intentions and Political Hypocrisy.
Other articles by this contributor:
This Way to the Ruin · the British Constitution
A Bear Armed with a Gun · The Widening Atlantic
Like Boiling a Frog · The Future of Wikipedia
Tax Breaks for Rich Murderers · Bush and the ‘Death Tax’
Invented Communities · post-nationalism
The Precautionary Principle · Taking a Chance on War
Diary · The Problem with English Football
Cricket’s Superpowers · Beyond the Ashes
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