Notebook: Bastards

THIS WEEK, you will know, is National Condom Week. A good time to consider the contribution of bastards to world civilisation. Leonardo da Vinci, for one. Erasmus, Boccaccio, Wagner, Cezanne, Strindberg, Dumas. Lawrence of Arabia. John Lennon and three British prime ministers: Walpole, Melbourne and Ramsay MacDonald. Sophia Loren. Food for thought; or, as the taxi driver once said to the famous philosopher, 'So what's it all about then, Bertrand?'