The older I get, the more I want to do. It beats death, decay or golf in unfortunate trousers. Peace and quiet depress me.

From the days of the Founding Fathers, right to this (2008) election, how and where America fights to defend its freedom, has been the ultimate question in its politics. The one that triggers rage and sorrow; the one that asks is the price of blood too dear? Or, if it is to stay true to its convictions, does America have no coice but to put its lives on the line?

But it struck me that the extreme violence and cruelty of the English Civil War had gone understated.

The older I get, the more I want to do. It beats death, decay or golf in unfortunate trousers. Peace and quiet depress me.

I first read War And Peace about 100 years after Tolstoy wrote it.

From 1789, perhaps even before that, it had been the willingness of politicians to exploit either the threat or the fact of violence that had given them the power to challenge constituted authority. Bloodshed was not the unfortunate by product of revolution, it was the source of energy.

I actually think that history has fed off the restlessness of cyber space, of kind of the frantic, segmented nature of the way we lead our lives. People want to be connected.