The pleasures of mental agility are much overstated, inevitably - as it now appears to me - by those not exclusively dependent upon them.

It does irritate me when I am described as a controversialist and commentator on Israel.

Choice dependent on wealth; those are the Tory words.

How should we begin to make amends for raising a generation obsessed with the pursuit of material wealth and indifferent to so much else?

In the grip of a neurological disorder, I am fast losing control of words even as my relationship with the world has been reduced to them.

Popularizing - much less venturing beyond one's secure turf - was frowned upon for many years. I think I probably internalized the prohibition, even though I was - and knew I was - among the best speakers and writers of my age cohort. I don't mean I was the best historian - a quite different measure.