I don't really care what people tell children - when you believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, one more fib won't hurt. But I am infuriated by the growing notion, posited in some touchy-feely quarters, that all women are, or can be, beautiful.

Covering up, so far as I can see, is often the accompaniment to far more truly shameful behaviour than stripping off.

Punk was over in two years. That was the only damn good thing about it.

I've never been nostalgic, personally or politically - if the past was so great, how come it's history?

It's received wisdom that the English are uniquely child-unfriendly.

Now the whole dizzying and delirious range of sexual possibilities has been boiled down to that one big, boring, bulimic word. RELATIONSHIP.

Graham Greene famously said that all writers need a chip of ice in their heart; Cusk can come across as the most beautiful ice palace of stalactites and stalagmites, and some people find her company, albeit by proxy, about as inviting as a long weekend in a walk-in frigidaire.