Neville mentions that Russia has just held a major celebration, and separately notes that within about ten years Stalingrad -- site of one of the Second World War's great battles -- has vanished from the map and the encyclopedias, renamed Volgograd, its namesake Stalin erased from the record entirely. He uses the disappearance of the name as an illustration that no mark a person tries to leave in the world endures, however permanent it seems at the time.