The political currents that topped the global agenda in the late 20th century - revolutionary nationalism, feminism and ethnic struggle - place culture at their heart.

Like all the best radical positions, then, mine is a thoroughly traditionalist one.

What's wrong with a bit of nostalgia between friends? I think nostalgia sometimes gets too much of a bad press.

I liked early Amis a lot, but I stopped reading him some time ago. I admire Hitchens on literary topics - I think he is very astute. McEwan, I read a bit. But I suppose it's more the ideological phenomenon that they represent together that interests me.

Evil is often supposed to be without rhyme or reason.

It is false to believe that the sun revolves around the earth, but it is not absurd.

Readers are less and less seen as mere non-writers, the subhuman "other" or flawed derivative of the author; the lack of a pen is no longer a shameful mark of secondary status but a positively enabling space, just as within every writer can be seen to lurk, as a repressed but contaminating antithesis, a reader.