To make the most of Christmas, focus on Christ.

Like its politicians and its wars, society has the teenagers it deserves.

Our trouble is that we drink too much tea. I see in this the slow revenge of the Orient, which has diverted the Yellow River down our throats.

The Canadian is often a baffled man because he feels different from his British kindred and his American neighbours, sharply refused to be lumped together with either of them, yet cannot make plain his difference.

But some of us are beginning to pull well away, in our irritation, from...the exquisite tasters, the vintage snobs, the three-star Michelin gourmets. There is, we feel, a decent area somewhere between boiled carrots and Beluga caviare, sour plonk and Chateau Lafitte, where we can take care of our gullets and bellies without worshipping them.

Public opinion polls are rather like children in a garden, digging things up all the time to see how they're growing.

Those no-sooner-have-I-touched-the-pillow people are past my comprehension. There is something bovine about them.