Football is not, in my view, a sport: it is somewhere between a business racket and a mental illness. I associate it with all the worst aspects of our society - violence, drunkenness, drugs, racism, exploitation, greed and stupidity; and that's just for starters.

In England, even the poorest of people believe that they have rights; that is very different from what satisfies the poor in other lands.

Football is not, in my view, a sport: it is somewhere between a business racket and a mental illness. I associate it with all the worst aspects of our society - violence, drunkenness, drugs, racism, exploitation, greed and stupidity; and that's just for starters.

The more a climate can be created in which neither the English nor the Scots are given cause to resent each other, the better.

Political genius consists in identifying oneself with a principle.

If there is writing on Hadrian's Wall, it reads that the English should leave Scotland to its own devices.

Those Victorians: endlessly fascinating, broad in their learning, heroic in their achievements, in parts completely mad.