Broadly speaking, most people lived their lives in a kind of unwilling conformity. The thing was that they were offered, as time went by, various kin….

The way that words mutate reminds me of fashions in music. The word--the note--is a constant. But the setting and chord in which it occurs alters wit….

It was a real revolution. But with one missing feature. That is the feeling in a people that "We have done it once, and if the new lot let us down, w….

Well, if there is a spectrum between ethnic and civic forms of nationalism, which is a rather schematic way of looking at it, all nationalism contain….

History--the product, not the raw material--is a bottle with a label. For many years now, the emphasis of historical discussion has been laid upon th….

There are many kinds of revelation. But the most powerful is the vision which transcends the mental boundary between life and non-life, and Scotland ….

Who invented political tolerance? The English invented it, it's something which has taken roots with some difficulty in Scottish politics..

English stupidity is an organism so primitive that it is apparently impossible to kill off. It reminds me of Physarum Polycephalum, the gigantic slim….

Darwinism did not strip meaning from the world but intensified it, 'by identifying it in as many aspects of life as possible'..

When Tony Benn became a minister in the 1960s -- and I think this must be apocryphal -- he had a huge map of Britain hung upside down in his office, ….

On the Black Sea, my father saw it begin. And on the Black Sea, seventy years on, I saw the beginning of its end..

The very word "change" has changed. When I was young--and not just because I was young--we looked forward with confident impatience to change. Planne….

But the people did get it. They had lost something -- not exactly their fear, but their patience. Suddenly it seemed unbearable to go on accepting th….

I went into journalism in a grandiose way. I thought maybe I'd do a little journalism whilst I write the great novel of all time you see -- one has t….

I think England has been in the long-term damaged by Britishness..

Who should regulate the media? Who should control the press? The commentariat agonises, as if the choice was between state control through some autoc….

In Moscow, dim and green under the summer rain, columns of armour were waiting in the side-roads off the long avenue from Vnukovo airport. Tanks from….

All human populations are in some sense immigrants. All hostility between different cultures in one place has an aspect of the classic immigrant grud….

I am always fascinated when people talk about 'the forging of a nation'. Most nations are forgeries, perpetrated in the last century or so..

I'm always interested in debunking myths if they are untrue. But it's also important to identify myths and how they function, what value they may hav….

To be defeated, but not to give in, is victory..