10 Early morning anxiety. A very strongly Jewish tradition.
9 Public speaking. There is always the fear of being unable to read your notes. I have anxieties that the audience will find what I have to say incomprehensible or irrelevant.
8 Dishonest academics in my field. Criminal psychology, because it's a sexy topic and is seen as having commercial potential, attracts a lot of nasty characters. I have the fear that these individuals will have more impact than they ought to have.
7 News. I remember asking a lecturer during the Cuban missile crisis: why are we bothering with statistics, when the world may be destroyed? That was a serious fear. Today, I'm more optimistic. It amazes me how I can be quite unmoved by news about major disasters yet get very upset that a family cat has to be put down. I worry less about major scares-whether it's terrorism or a carcinogen in food-than about our children's relationships with their partners.
6 The world my granddaughter will live in. More sadness than fear, but a deep one: I realise that the richness and the joy of the world I was fortunate enough to explore is not there any longer. A novel depicting a dystopian future in which human beings are living on the brink of disaster really speaks to me.
5 Lack of moral centre. In politics, there aren't any people of real principle to have the charisma to be major leaders. I don't see the need for religious belief to provide a moral core, but the lack of it, particularly the lack of commitment in relationships, produces a febrile quality in a society with huge emphasis on immediate gratification.
4 Society breeding crime. All my contacts with criminals show that what they're doing is just a slightly more extreme version of what everybody is doing. The murder rate in 15th-century Oxford was far higher than it is today; but there are particular areas where changes in society have made incidents of criminality more likely.
3 Being sixty. You feel you have less worth, less significance. If you've been very active and productive the fear is of not being able to produce any more. It's also a fear of losing independence. As you get older you have to convince younger people to allow you to do things.
2 The knock on the door. All my father's close relatives were killed by the Nazis. Although I was born in Liverpool, I grew up with the fear of being herded off to a concentration camp. The ability to think ahead of villains may have been the thing that allowed me to respond to the invitation to work with the police. It's about understanding and controlling criminals in order to survive.
1 Dying too soon. Since childhood, I've had the desire to explore my potential even if I know I'm not going to do terribly well. The fundamental fear is that I'll die before I get the opportunity to do these things and see if I can enjoy doing them.
