A World Elsewhere

The human inclination to imagine perfect worlds - or invent Utopias - has long intrigued Bernard Levin and has led him on a curious quest. What goal, other than Utopia, would find the prophet Isaiah, Samuel Butler, Casanova and B.F. Skinner on the same trail? What else would be located by various commentators in San Francisco, Athens, Shangri-La, deep in the earth, high in the sky, beneath the waters, and in worlds just beyond the known one? Sir Thomas More introduced the word "Utopia" in his book of 1516. Plato's "Republic" was a Utopia, as was Shakespeare's "Tempest". Alchemists, crusaders and ecologists have sought utopian solutions to the human condition - so have Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot. Utopians may feel a longing for perfection that never was, and seek it in other times or civilizations - or they hold to the blind conviction that hope lies around the corner. Utopians may aim for equality of income, perfection of happiness, benevolence in architecture or pure unsullied pleasure. Why are they always disappointed? The range and diversity of the impulse makes Levin's investigation potentially exciting.
Even for a man who has conducted readers over the Alps, round the music festivals, along the Rhine and up New York's Fifth Avenue, it is terrain full of surprises.