I think the socialist movement, by removing many, many people from grinding stagnation and poverty and overwork, does enable people not just to lead better lives but to be better people.

It's the professional deformation of many writers, and has ruined not a few. (I remember Kingsley Amis, himself no slouch, saying that he could tell on what page of the novel Paul Scott had reached for the bottle and thrown caution to the winds.)

It's true that obscenity is a matter of taste and in the eye of the beholder.

Those who want to be offended don't have the right to try and close down the newspaper that offends them.

The moment of near despair is quite often the moment that precedes courage.

Ronald Reagan used to alarm other constituencies by speaking freely about the End Times foreshadowed in the Bible.

We have known for a long time that Prince Charles' empty sails are so rigged as to be swelled by any passing waft or breeze of crankiness and cant. He fell for the fake anthropologist Laurens van der Post. He was bowled over by the charms of homeopathic medicine. He has been believably reported as saying that plants do better if you talk to them in a soothing and encouraging way