Seeing John Major govern the country is like watching Edward Scissorhands try to make balloon animals.

I know of no wars started by anyone to impose lack of religion on someone else.

Remember how Margaret Thatcher came to believe that abroad was more important than at home? Didn't do her much good.

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.

Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?

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

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.