Balancing the common good with the freedom and liberty to exercise that individuality has been and remains a challenge for those committed to democracy while understanding that the polis ensures our participation and therefore our citizenship.

What is it that unites, on the left of British politics, George Orwell, Billy Bragg, Gordon Brown and myself? An understanding that identity and a sense of belonging need to be linked to our commitment to nationhood and a modern form of patriotism.

It is a mistake to separate learning for work and for community and personal development.

Children whose parents return to study do much better at school. Offenders who persist with studies are much less likely to reoffend. The national mental health strategy recognises the important role adult learning can play for people recovering from mental illness.

It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship.

I turn to books for a feeling of companionship: for somebody knowing what I have known.

When I was in college and reading music and doing ear training, I was a little more advanced than the other people in my choir classes. So to entertain myself and kind of annoy the friends around me, I would sing just under the pitch or just above the pitch.

I try to write from a place of writing what I know, and what I know is interesting and appropriate women with edgy senses of humor. They're not soft people, so why are all the movies about women soft? My friends are all blazing their own paths. Some are married with kids, but a lot of them aren't. Some of them don't want that life.