I wrote this book mostly during successive COVID-19 lockdowns in the United Kingdom in 2020 and 2021. I have wanted to write something like it for some years now, but my day job made it challenging. You are not really expected to write books as a university president or vice-chancellor, unless they are collections of thoughts about the future of universities. I had no interest in writing that book; others have already done so, and well. Then I was approached to deliver the John V. Clyne Lectures at Green College, University of British Columbia, with the liberating stipulation that I could talk about anything at all. I was being offered a unique opportunity to pull together years of reading, discussing and learning from colleagues and students. And the urgency of making a small contribution to the building of greater optimism in our era was heightened by multiple anxieties prompted by the coronavirus crisis.

Those anxieties built on others represented by the harsh, divisive politics of Brexit and Trumpism, by increasingly repressive populist nationalism in many countries around the world, by growing anger over economic inequality and the continuing effects of economic and cultural globalisation, by worries about job losses and societal decay driven by disruptive technologies and culturally dominating social media networks, and, of course, by the existential fear generated by accelerating climate change. And later, as I prepared the final manuscript, President Putin launched a war of aggression against Ukraine, reigniting the possibility of nuclear conflagration.

With lockdown and suspended travel, it seemed the time to act, and here I happily admit that as a professor, I count thinking, and then writing, as acting. My wife, Paula, had left Cambridge for a couple of weeks, we thought, to celebrate the birthday of a small grandchild. That turned into five months when schools and day care facilities closed, travel ceased and we were forced into isolation. I took the opportunity to save my own sanity by engaging the brain and finally beginning to write this book. The manuscript was delivered for publication in September 2022.