Huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933, involving the deaths of millions of people, have actually escaped the attention of the majority of English russophiles.

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question.

He would say that God had given him a tail to keep the flies off, but that he would sooner have had no tail and no flies.

I watched him [a 'fat Russian agent'] with some interest, for it was the first time that I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies -- unless one counts journalists.

The prime necessities for success in life are money, athleticism, tailor made clothes and a charming smile.

The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.