Like the rest of us, Tom Paulin is a bundle of contradictions. At its finest, his work is brave, adventurous, original and wonderfully idiosyncratic.

The past can be used to renew the present, not just to bury it.

Successful revolutions are those which end up by erasing all traces of themselves.

The conversion of agnostic High Tories to the Anglican church is always rather suspect. It seems too pat and predictable, too clearly a matter of politics rather than faith.

Works of art cannot save us. They can simply render us more sensitive to what needs to be repaired.

Negativity is often looked upon [in the USA] as a kind of thought crime. Not since the advent of socialist realism has the world witnessed such pathological upbeatness.

Scratch a schoolboy and you find a savage.