Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

‘‘Since personal publicity has become so much a feature of everyday life, grouse and grouse shooters have been much in the public eye. The daily papers still publish with creditable buoyancy their accounts of the crack of the rifle being heard on the moors at dawn, and so on… And the opening day is, of course, always the ‘Glorious Twelfth’. A great deal of nonsense is written, but I do not suppose it does much harm.”

One might easily suppose that the above was written in 2020. It was, however, penned by Martin Stephens – the author of – in 1939. From his comment, it seems that nothing much has really changed in the ensuing 81 years, at least as far as public perception is concerned. However, unlike 1939 when the media consisted of only the printed word and radio, we nowadays have a cornucopia of public