A couple from Sydney or Melbourne might leave on the same day for their holiday: the wife might go sun-bathing at Surfers Paradise, in Queensland, the husband ski-ing in the Snowy Mountains. A lucky country.

I asked many friends if Australian anti-intellectualism was still a living force and they all told me it was. If you are above average intelligence, hide this embarrassing fact.

A foreign observer is struck by our gentleness: by the orderly behaviour of the English crowds, the lack of pushing and quarrelling, the willingness to form queues.

The country has always been governed by a coalition but today it is governed by a so-called Grand Coalition which is a more polite word for all and sundry.

Nobody uses his car in New York, because so many people use it that traffic is congested and unbearably slow.

Japan is, you often feel, an improved version of the United States.

On the Continent there is one topic which should be avoided-the weather; in England, if you do not repeat the phrase "Lovely day, isn't it?" at least two hundred times a day, you are considered a bit dull.