The IRA sending a message of sympathy to America is like Jack the Ripper giving us a lesson in the sanctity of human life.

Of the 664 men who rode into the Valley of Death about 540 eventually got out of it again. By far the highest casualty rate was among the horses. Compared with the Somme or an evening in the Blitz, the Valley of Death was a piece of cake.

The IRA sending a message of sympathy to America is like Jack the Ripper giving us a lesson in the sanctity of human life.

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

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

This is, in theory, still a free country, but our politically correct, censorious times are such that many of us tremble to give vent to perfectly acceptable views for fear of condemnation. Freedom of speech is thereby imperiled, big questions go undebated, and great lies become accepted, unequivocally as great truths.

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