People often of masterful intelligence, trained usually in law or economics or perhaps in political science, who have led their governments into disastrous decisions and miscalculations because they have no awareness whatever of the historical background, the cultural universe, of the foreign societies with which they have to deal.

History is what we read, write and think about the past.

Let us be clear. Prison works. It ensures that we are protected from murderers, muggers and rapists, and it makes many who are tempted to commit crime think twice.

I believe abortion should be available to everyone, but the law should be changed. In the past I voted for a restriction to 22 weeks, and I would be prepared to go down to 20.

The true use of history, whether civil or military, is not to make man clever for the next time, it is to make him wise forever.

Tony Blair is already secretly grinning at the prospect of his third victory. You don't have to settle for that.

So long as the international community consists of sovereign states, war between them remains a possibility, of which all governments have to take reasonable account.