It could be argued that every age gets the comfort savagery writer it deserves.

As a species, we're addicted to the facile discrimination involved in saying that something or phenomenon is either 'this' or 'that' - how much more uncomfortable that it may well be 'the other'.

In survey after survey, people report that the greatest dangers they face are, in this order: terrorist attack, plane crashes and nuclear accidents. This despite the fact that these three combined have killed fewer people in the past half-century than car accidents do in any given year.

Without a shadow of doubt, Trafalgar Square has to be one of the most crap urban public spaces in the world.

The life of the professional writer - like that of any freelance, whether she be a plumber or a podiatrist - is predicated on willpower. Without it there simply wouldn't be any remuneration, period.

Once the working classes were in chains, now they're in chain restaurants.

Sometimes the crowd is the madness - at others it's the absence of the crowd that is.