He was one of the masters of the thriller and he really was one of the great signposts, because he took the spy thriller out of the gentility of the drawing room and into the back streets of Istanbul and where it all really happened, ... The Day of the Jackal.

The Internet offers authors and their readers a new diversity of opportunities and freedom.

It is cold at six-forty in the morning on a March day in Paris, and seems even colder when a man is about to be executed by firing squad.

The British have always coped without becoming a dictatorship.

He was one of the masters of the thriller and he really was one of the great signposts, because he took the spy thriller out of the gentility of the drawing room and into the back streets of Istanbul and where it all really happened, ... The Day of the Jackal.

It could well be argued that the continuing rights abuses of the present Iraqi regime, if it is allowed to survive, will prove most distressing. This is beyond any doubt. But the West has been required to witness terrible scenes in China, Russia, Vietnam, East Timor, Cambodia, and many other parts of the world. It is simply not possible for the United States to impose humanity on a worldwide scale unless it is prepared to enter into permanent global war.

As ever with modern Britain, we are let down by a vast, over-manned, over-funded, hidebound, obstructive, box-ticking and incompetent bureaucracy.