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.

An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one.

The world still consists of two clearly divided groups: the English and the foreigners. One group consists of less than 50 million people; the other of 3,950 million. The latter group does not really count.

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

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.

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

Bargaining is a repulsive habit; compromise is one of the highest human virtues - the difference between the two being that the first is practised on the Continent, the latter in Great Britain.