Like most people of my generation, I was raised on meat. It was there at nearly every meal and when it wasn't there, there was fish instead. We had bacon, liver, sausages, mince, lamb, chicken, beef, roasted pork and on Christmas Day we had a big fat turkey with all the trimmings. As a child I never even heard of vegetarianism. It wasn't a possibility and as for veganism, well I might have thought it was some obscure eastern religion. Once upon a raft in the middle of an Austrian lake, I pulled in a sea line with several hooks upon it. I must have been ten or eleven years old. On every hook there was a beautiful fish, writhing in the air, their silvery scales catching the sunlight of that August morning. I called to my brother Paul who was on the shore, "I've caught some fish! What do I do?" "Bash 'em with the paddle! Kill 'em!" he called back. "What? I can't do that!" I said and paddled back to the shore with the writhing f...