One way or another, all the poets of the thirties and forties reacted to Auden, either by rejecting him or trying to absorb him.

The repeat run of Fawlty Towers (BBC2) drew bigger audiences than ever and deservedly so. Statistical surveys reveal that only the television critic of the Spectator is incapable of seeing the joke, which is that Basil Fawlty has the wrong temperament to be a hotel proprietor, just as some other people have the wrong temperament to be television critics.

Among artists without talent Marxism will always be popular, since it enables them to blame society for the fact that nobody wants to hear what they have to say.

Young men especially - I don't know if young women feel much the same - but young men think they are immortal, automatically. They have no idea of time because they have so much energy and I was like that.

Even in moments of tranquility, Murray Walker sounds like a man whose trousers are on fire.

Twin miracles of mascara, her eyes looked like the corpses of two small crows that had crashed into a chalk cliff.

It's my mission to tell the Australians from abroad in my work that Australia is a wonderful place.