I write as someone who has no more time for repressive Islam than he does for repressive Christianity or Judaism, but at least look at the face in the hijab - and try to imagine the one beneath the niqab - before you depersonalise its wearer.

I enjoy doing very high mileages, partly out of masochism and also because I like to feel the shape of the landscape.

So I was smacked up on the Prime Minister's jet – big deal.

Don't look back until you've written an entire draft.

Ideologists of all kinds find a strange sort of comfort in the madness of the crowd; it confirms them in their suspicion that history, far from being made by the great mass of individuals - as Marx averred - is rather unmade by a single massive individual, a collective Other, who stands in stark contrast to you and he.

The cynics are correct the sense of freewill is only that feeling which we have when we take the necessitated option that most appeals to us.

The high arts of literature and music stand in a curious relationship to one another, at once securely comfortable and deeply uneasy - rather like a long-term marriage.