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

There's a flip side to having prominent public intellectuals, which is that they start meddling in politics and often with quite disastrous results.

It is fair to say that insofar as sport is taken seriously by those who play it, then to that extent their conduct in play - their ability to deal with loss or victory, their ability to meld strategic thinking and brute force - can be taken as a small-scale model of how they, or others like them, might behave in life.

The great liberty of the fictional writer is to let the imagination out of the traces and see it gallop off over the horizon.

There is a deep sadness to American poverty, greater than the sadness of any other kind. It's because America has such an ideology of success.

You may have gathered that I am not the most cheerful of revellers - some characterise me as the death and soullessness of any party but it wasn't always so, believe me.

I have a healthy appetite for solitude. If you don't, you have no business being a writer.