There I was yesterday morning, reading the latest series of indiscretions about people in high places. This time they came from a lawyer, no longer alive, once famous for advising the great and the good about how to stay out of the press. Well, he was unwise enough to tell a friend what he thought about some of the people involved, and that friend has now sold the story to the press.

Is anything private any more? Probably not, to judge by the sheer number of kiss-and-tell confessions and friend-reveals-all scandals we've had in recent years. Woody Allen once joked, "They through me out for cheating in my metaphysics exam. They caught me looking into someone else's soul." Today, looking into someone else's private life has become our favourite entertainment. Whatever happened to that quaint old saying that "discretion is the better part of valour."

I remember once sitting at a dinner next to a distinguished academic I'd asked to be a judge of an award scheme. The ceremony was due to take place the next week. Whatever happens, I said, don't tell anyone who's won. Nobody's supposed to know in advance. To my amazement he proceeded, in a rather loud voice, to name the winner. I said, "But it's supposed to be a secret." He said, "I practice the Oxford way of keeping a secret." "What's that?" I asked. He replied: "You only tell one person at a time."

Luckily on that occasion no harm was done. But it isn't always the case. Gossip rakes over the reputation of the dead. It plays havoc with relationships between the living. Discretion is to speech what clothes are to the body. Too much nakedness eventually makes us hateful to one another.

Of course, there are truths we need to know; information it's wrong to hide; secrets that ought to be exposed. But not everything's like that. Not for nothing did the Bible teach, "Don't go round as a gossip among your people" [Lev. 19:16]. Those long lost virtues of reticence and honoring confidences were born out of a desire to protect people and reputations. They cast a veil over the less lovely aspects of the human personality. A world in which people generally think well of one another is better than one in which we suspect that every saint is really a sinner. A cynical society is one that's lost the capacity to admire.

Not everything we hear should we tell, and not everything we know should we sell. Otherwise we'll find we've made a world without friendship, loyalty and trust; and that can't be good news in the long run.

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