There are, of course, deeply sincere people of religion in different parts of the world who genuinely fight on the side of the poor, but they are usually in conflict with organised religion themselves.

In 1962, President Kennedy expanded an earlier trade embargo put in place by a predecessor, President Eisenhower, to a total economic blockade, which pushed the Cubans further in Moscow's direction.

I didn't know a thing about Oxford and had never been to Britain. My father suggested it because in 1939 he had been about to take up a place at Wadham College, but the war broke out, and he joined the Army instead.

The only continent where social movements have led to political parties that have pushed through serious social and political reforms is in South America.

I wanted to be of service to the Peace League, and how could I better do so than by trying to write a book which should propagate its ideas? And I could do it most effectively, I thought, in the form of a story.

If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.

I'd say my mother made more of a difference to me than anyone else did. I know that's a conventional and perhaps mundane answer, but my family was blown apart at the start of World War II.

The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between.