Enquire Within

This is a childhood memory. Friday evening with my parents, Sunday afternoon at my grandmother's, the defining events of the week. On Sunday my grandmother made lunch, Austrian inflected polish cookery, made with love but not, perhaps, finesse. Then a rest, as the adults chatted, in a shifting mixture of English, German and Polish, appropriate to the participants, the content, and the suitability for the ears of the children. Sometimes we would watch the wrestling (with Mick McManus) on the rented Rediffusion television, but mostly we read. Stretched out on the faded Persian rugs that my grandmother had acquired. I seldom brought a book with me, preferring instead the rather eccentric collection of books that my grandmother had accumulated. There were sets of Goethe, Schiller and Heine, of course. But they were then, and remain now, beyond my reach. Jean Plaidy, a guilty pleasure because I already intuited that they were 'books for girls'. Mostly however 'Enquire Within'. Heavy red bound volumes with embossed covers.

I know now that the volumes of Enquire Within that I consumed there, on the long afternoons, in the warmth and love of my grandmother's house, were not the distinguished Victorian volumes of the same name ('Enquire Within Upon Everything') but a 1930s rehash ('Everybody Enquire Within') but their influence on me owes nothing to originality or distinction. Tim Berners-Lee, the progenitor of the web, called its first versions ENQUIRE. The appropriateness of his choice is captured by the introduction to the volumes of my childhood.

"This book, as its title implies is a work that will answer all sorts of questions and supply all kinds of information to those who consult it. In our reading we are constantly coming across names and references that are unknown to us, and when we consult ordinary books of reference such as encyclopaedias and dictionaries, we are unable to get help. Where for instance, shall we turn to discover who were the White-eyed Kaffir, the Mad Mullah or the Hanging Judge? The terms are not in books of reference generally available."

It is difficult to imagine an opening sentence such as this appearing in a book today - but it was true to its promise. The book opens: "Of What Use are a Cat's Whiskers?", "Are Diamonds Always White?", "How Does a Ship's Siren Work", Which is the Tallest Building in the World?", "Was St George an Englishman?", "What is a Fuehrer?". Each item illustrated, each question answered, clearly, definitely and to the child's mind, conclusively. There was an index but the fun was dipping at random: "What is a Jesse Window?", "Which Furs Wear Best?", and so on.

Perhaps there are other reasons that I became a University Professor. Given my family it is hardly an unexpected choice. Nevertheless, I still think that the seed was planted by Enquire Within. There seems to me, still, to be no higher calling than answering the Enquire Within sort of questions and no better tone to aspire to than its cool, authoritative and assured voice. It is Sunday afternoon.