The year 1988 feels like a very long time ago to anyone who remembers it, and ancient history to anyone who doesn’t. I turned 20 halfway through it. So I’m afraid whatever travails and traumas I was undergoing have now been blotted out by the middle-aged person’s rose-tinted remembrance of being young. The grass was greener then, my memory tells me, unreliably. One recollection that I can confirm with the aid of historical evidence is that ‘Fast Car’ by Tracy Chapman was everywhere. I heard it in seedy gay bars, at civil-service leaving dos, at family barbecues. It is one...