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

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

From the earliest days, the Rothschilds appreciated the importance of proximity to politicians, the men who determined not only the extent of budget deficits but also the domestic and foreign policies.

Empires, essentially, create order. In their absence, you don't end up with lots of happy, little nation-states full of people sitting around campfires singing John Lennon's "Imagine." What you end up with is civil war, anarchy.

So much of liberalism in its classical sense is taken for granted in the west today and even disrespected. We take freedom for granted, and because of this we don't understand how incredibly vulnerable it is.

I would say I'm a 19th-century liberal, possibly even an 18th-century one.

Why did the Germans and Japanese keep fighting after 1943 when every rational hope of victory had disappeared?