If you read the 'Daily Mail,' you would imagine that the British middle classes lead lives of unremitting misery.

The nanny seemed to be extinct until 1975, when, like the coelacanth, she suddenly and unexpectedly reappeared in the shape of Margaret Thatcher.

Some government expenditure actually makes a profit. Our theatre leads the world. Loads of tourists must be attracted by the fact that you could spend a week in London doing nothing but visit superb museums and galleries, free.

I've been intrigued by 'Le Monde' ever since work took me to Paris once, and I noted that on a day when there was some huge worldwide story, the paper led its front page on some cabinet changes in Turkey. It implied a magnificent disdain for the quotidian folderol of mere news.

In Washington, success is just a training course for failure.

The British are the last national group who can be insulted by Hollywood without any comeback. These days if you depict Italians as gangsters, Saudis as terrorists or Mexicans as violent drug dealers you'll never hear the end of it. But as still the largest - and possibly the richest - ethnic group in the States, the British just have to take it.

When you visit a foreign city you are in it, but not of it, separated by a glass wall. Once, while a student, I was getting dressed in my ground-floor room when a family of Italians crossed the grass to watch, as if I were laid on for their amusement and instruction.