How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre.

Unfortunately it is the weak who destroy the strong.

I had two experiences of criminality: one was my conman father, the other was teaching at Eton

When the world is destroyed, it will be destroyed not by its madmen but by the sanity of its experts and the superior ignorance of its bureaucrats.

I think I'm in the same mood as ever, but in some ways more mature. I guess you could say that, at 65, when you've seen the world shape up as I have, there are only two things you can do: laugh or kill yourself.

As our Governments spin, lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and looks the other way.

In the hands of politicians grand designs achieve nothing but new forms of the old misery.