Whole communities are growing up without fathers or male role models. Bringing up a family in the best of circumstances is not easy. To try to do it by placing the entire burden on women - 91% of single-parent families in Britain are headed by the mother, according to census data - is practically absurd and morally indefensible.

While we can remember the past, we cannot write the future. Only our children, the future of our community, can do that.

Britain, relative to the U.S., is a highly secular society. Philanthropy alone cannot fill the gap left by government cutbacks. And the sources of altruism go deep into our evolutionary past.

If we are to negotiate the coming years safely, we may need a new kind of leadership. To put it more precisely, we need the rediscovery of an ancient kind of leadership that has rarely been given the prominence it deserves. I mean the leader as teacher.

Near-death experiences give you balance. You become more worldly. Your ideas become bigger.

We need to stop spending money on death, the war in Iraq and on enhancing the lives of the people in our own country.

Death and I are head to head in a total collision, pure and mutual distaste.

Grief can take care if itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.