Still, there remains so much to relish and remember.

We happen upon ourselves when nothing much happens to us, and we are transformed in the process...

We are not merely tempered and schooled by failure but compelled, in however subtle a fashion, to become something other than we were.

I do have one very brutal writing ritual. If I'm working in the morning, I don't allow myself a cup of tea until I've written two paragraphs. It's harsh.

Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) is now fourteen, and, while he gives little sign of doing what Lord Rochester planned to do at the same age, there are nonetheless changes afoot. Harry's voice, like that of his best friend, Ron (Rupert Grint), sounds like the mating cry of an oboe, and, worse still, the two cease to be best friends.

That is why the ideal literary diet consists of trash and classics; all that has survived, and all that has no reason to survive - books you can read without thinking, and books you have to read if you want to think at all.

The obvious precedent for Beijing 2008 was the Berlin Olympics, in 1936. Both were showcases for a muscle-flexing nation, although Hitler made an elementary error when he chose not to dress his young National Socialists in lime-green catsuits laced with twinkling fairy lights.