GENERATIONAL CHANGE

wo heroes of mine are Christopher Geidt and Jonathan Sumption. Scratching your head? Well, Baron Geidt has three knighthoods and was the Queen’s Private Secretary for 15 years; he enjoyed a career at the Foreign Office and in the British army before that. Lord Sumption is a man of extraordinary intellect. He was a history lecturer at Oxford before becoming a barrister, and he was the first man to have been called from the bar to the Supreme Court without first working as a judge. (He also wrote a multi-volume tome on the Hundred Years war to pass his spare time.) Both men have exercised major influence in public life while serving others, and have done so without ever seeking the limelight in return. Far too often the lure of doing good deeds is the reciprocal pat