On the rare occasions when I spend a night in Oxford, the keeping of the hours by the clock towers in New College, and Merton, and the great booming of Tom tolling 101 times at 9 pm at Christ Church are inextricably interwoven with memories and regrets and lost joys. The sound almost sends me mad, so intense are the feelings it evokes.

I am shy to admit that I have followed the advice given all those years ago by a wise archbishop to a bewildered young man: that moments of unbelief 'don't matter,' that if you return to a practice of the faith, faith will return.

In the past, I used to counter any such notions by asking myself: 'Would you really want President Hattersley?' I now find that possibility rather cheers me up. With his chubby, Dickensian features and his knowledge of T.H. Green and other harmless leftish political classics, Hattersley might not be such a bad thing after all.

We, while noting many things amiss about Victorian society, more often sense them judging us.

As Hitler himself later enunciated, it matters not how idiotic the creed, what matters is the firmness with which it is enunciated.

It is remarkable how easily children and grown-ups adapt to living in a dictatorship organised by lunatics.

We tell ourselves that God is dead, when what we mean is that God is Dad, and we wish him dead.