To many people holidays are not voyages of discovery, but a ritual of reassurance.

While sticks and stones break bones, words can never hurt? Manifestly untrue. Politics everywhere are holistic, interconnected, and the rhetoric of right or left can produce toxic atmospheres in which lunacy thrives.

Marx was wrong. Religion is not the opiate of the people. Opium suggests something soporific, numbing, dulling. Too often religion has been an aphrodisiac for horror, a Benzedrine for bestiality. At its best it has lifted spirits and raised spires. At its worst it has turned entire civilizations into cemeteries.

To many people holidays are not voyages of discovery, but a ritual of reassurance.

Most people can do extraordinary things if they have the confidence or take the risks. Yet most people

Fame often comes to those who are thinking about something else, whereas celebrity comes to those who think about nothing else. Celebrity is, if you like, a forgery of fame: it has the form but lacks the content.

Today, words. Tomorrow, sticks and stones. And the day after that?