I don't know if Britain ever really achieved that much glamour. We had post-war austerity rather than post-war prosperity, and our cultural products of the time include some pretty dour kitchen-sink dramas of the A Kind of Loving variety. (This kind of film seems disillusioned with the sixties before they've even really begun.)

There's a strong aspect of Buddhism which is geared towards ending all fertility.

The imagination is fertile. From seeds of the imagination, much is made manifest.

I grew up in North Devon, by the sea, and feel a special affinity for the landscape there, despite a lack of actual ancestry.

I went for a walk in the rain. Recently, whenever it rains, I feel like I want to go for a walk.

I was in just the right generation to have taken feminism seriously by osmosis - also the generation when the breakdown of the family really began and for whom The Smiths were something new and essential.

The peculiar thing is that, in focusing only on the here and now, Buddhism seems to despise the world.