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.

I refuse to accept that Western civilization is like some hopeless old version of Microsoft DOS, doomed to freeze, then crash. I still cling to the hope that the United States is the Mac to Europe's PC, and that if one part of the West can successfully update and reboot itself, it's America.

I can't imagine having a conversation about 'Celebrity Big Brother' in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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

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.

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

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