Among the many arguments to be made against cultural revolutions is that they are monotonous in spirit and monomaniacal in intention.

Literature is a house with many mansions.

I have made of Sydney, to which I sailed in 1965, a paradise beyond the powers of fancy.

The young come in many guises: vigorous and passionate, vindictive and mean-spirited. And not every person over 65 is dozing in a retirement home.

I was a 'reverence for life' man - 'see life steadily and see it whole' - in my days as a lecturer in English lit. We are, I argued, if not exactly 'saved' by reading, at least partially 'repaired' by it: made the better morally and existentially.

'Great Expectations', in short, is a more damning account of the mess Dickens himself had made of love than any denunciation on behalf of the outraged wives club could ever be.