Jonny Steinberg on what drives him to peel back the past & expose the unseen

Seated in the midst of the gesturing babble that marks lunchtime at the Wits Club, Jonny Steinberg radiates stillness. Dedicated bird-watchers learn to be calm like this, observing minutely while making no movement that might disturb or distract their subjects. Grecian urns and psychotherapists know this quietness. And so, it seems, do biographer-historians, or at least this one