President Johnson, toward the end of his term, had become so enraged with the opposition that he harbored the suspicion that they were literally traitors, but he had kept that idea to himself.
His central character is Alfred Russel Wallace, the self-taught naturalist who grasped biology's most profound insight, the principle of natural selection, while Charles Darwin was still keeping the idea to himself.
Davies is curating this year's Meltdown on the South Bank, and though he's pleased to be doing so – his line-up, which includes Madness, Harrison Birtwistle and Anna Calvi, is quirky, stellar and enjoyably English – he nevertheless had to sell the idea to himself before he was able to sign on the dotted line.
But, truly, it would have been a better idea to keep the thought to himself.
Working for newspapers including the Daily Star, Sun and Sunday People, he deployed an aggressive style and bold story ideas to propel himself to the top of the tabloid culture.
When you listen, you create emotional space for that person to be vulnerable, to explore his ideas, to be himself without self-consciousness.
He dislikes explaining his writing process or the origin of his ideas, even to himself.
In another recent column, she concluded that Cameron should follow his instincts and look outside his party's comfort zone for policy ideas: "Left to himself, Cameron's instincts tend to be ecumenical.
"He had an idea to fix himself," he said of his son, changing the subject.
Bunker, an Englishman, had what is perhaps a more alluring idea: to devote himself largely to the prehistory of the men and women who founded the colony.
