RIP, Tony Judt

Tony Judt has died. I have read very little of his work, but what little I have, makes me think that I should seek out more. Sample:

“History can show you that it was one pile of bad stuff after another,” he once declared. “It can also show you that there’s been tremendous progress in knowledge, behaviour, laws, civilisation. It cannot show you that there was a meaning behind it.
“And if you can’t find a meaning behind history, what would be the meaning of any single life? I was born accidentally. I lived accidentally in London. We nearly migrated to New Zealand. So much of my life has been a product of chance, I can’t see a meaning in it at all.”

So it goes. And that can, accidentally, add up to a great deal.

P.S. here’s a video of Judt talking about the appalling disease that killed him