If young men have jobs - or the prospects of jobs - they are less likely to take up arms, they are less likely to join the resistance.

The law of unintended consequences is the only real law of history.

For 500 years the West patented six killer applications that set it apart. The first to download them was Japan. Over the last century, one Asian country after another has downloaded these killer apps- competition, modern science, the rule of law and private property rights, modern medicine, the consumer society and the work ethic. Those six things are the secret sauce of Western civilization.

In the old days it would have been a relatively simple matter to have checked Hitler's territorial ambitions. All you'd have needed would have been the 1914 combination of Britain, France and Russia. Indeed, if such an alliance had acted decisively to defend Czechoslovakia in 1938, Hitler might even have been overthrown by his own military. But it was not to be.

Collaboration is risky. If it fails, if the occupation is wound up prematurely and the bad guys come back to power, you might find yourself in some serious trouble.

The British press has an insatiable appetite for making public things that should be private. It's a prurience that I've never understood.

When I first came to Oxford, I struggled to feel comfortable in an Anglican, public school-dominated institution.