We live in strange and interesting times. Seeing Trump and Kim yesterday - shaking hands, smiling and backslapping - is not something that anyone would have expected even 12 months ago. I had always hoped for dialogue between the rogue regime and the US, in spite of the clear evidence that North Korea has consistently failed to keep its promises in the past.

But since the alternative would likely be war, and potentially nuclear war, then even a Chamberlain peace-in-our-time moment would suffice in the interim, whilst some other solution is cobbled together. Trump is the oddest of democratic leaders I can imagine, though they seem to be proliferating. Western Democracies are in need of renewal if populists are to be kept at bay.

The Chinese have a proverb, "Better to be a dog in a peaceful time, than to be a human in a chaotic (warring) period." Hegel put the same idea less lyrically when he noted that, "World history is not the ground of happiness. The periods of happiness are empty pages in her."

Unfortunately we do not live in those empty pages so we must, perforce, envy the dog. I wish it were otherwise.