With growing economic prowess comes, of course, military power.

When I was growing up the obvious antisemites were the knuckle-draggers in the National Front.

The Sun' and the 'News of the World' fell in line behind New Labour in the run up to the 1997 election, 'The Times' stayed broadly neutral and 'The Sunday Times' unenthusiastically Tory. After the election, 'The Times' quickly fell in line as the New Labour house journal.

I always wanted to have a career in print and as a broadcaster.

If you're older you want to tell stories about the pool of human life and living and to communicate, not only to your age group but to do an age group that can begin to understand, that has enough experience of life far beyond the taste of life.

I find increasingly that the more extreme are the things going on in your life, the more cultural reference points fail you. More mythical reference points actually help, and you realise that's what myths are for. It's for human beings to process their experience in extremis.

I've learned the lesson that when you're in the middle of something that seems overwhelming, or you're in a bad situation and it seems like it's the end of the world or whatever, then you learn that it's not.

A lot of people think that addiction is a choice. A lot of people think it's a matter of will. That has not been my experience. I don't find it to have anything to do with strength.