I have too much respect for music to sing myself, as my voice is such that it makes the average crow sound like Fischer-Dieskau. It is not that I am tone-deaf; on the contrary, I am appalled by the tuneless croaking sound I make when forced to try. Many a time when asked in remote places to sing a ...

I would make a very bad bodyguard—not that it has ever been my ambition to be one. I would be useless not merely because I am incapable of fighting, but because I am not suspicious (and therefore vigilant) enough. Notwithstanding a cynical view of the world, I am generally trusting of the ...

Of recent months, several children of friends of mine have asked my help in preparing what they call a personal statement in their application for a job or place at university. Why they should ask me to help them is a bit of a mystery; I am glad to say that I made my career, such as it was, before ...

I have met Tariq Ramadan only once in my life and was very impressed by him—impressed unfavorably, that is. He seemed to me then the Jimmy Swaggart of Islamism, or at least the kind of man from whom one would certainly not buy a secondhand car. He had the affability of a carpet salesman in a ...

Last week I stayed in a part of London on the border between a rich and a poor part of the city: on one side houses costing millions, on the other side social housing for the city’s hewers of wood and drawers of water, or at least drawers of social security. There was a certain exhilaration in ...

There is nothing quite as pleasing as to contemplate the imminent end of the world or the downfall of civilization. It gives you a sense of superiority for having recognized it when all about you people are going about their business as usual, as if nothing were about to happen. The fools! I was ...

I went last week to a production of Rigoletto, the revival of a production first staged in 2001. A criticism that I read in advance informed me that the initial orgy scene had been toned down somewhat by comparison with what had gone seventeen years before. Was this progress or regression? The ...

While researching a book recently, I came across the figure of Max Plowman, a minor writer of the 1910s, ’20s, ’30s, and very early ’40s (he died in 1941). His name rang with me the very faintest of bells, though I could not have said why. He is now largely forgotten, as almost everyone who ...

I suspect that I am of the last generation that ever considers writing anything by longhand. Indeed, there are reported to be places in America where children are no longer even taught longhand. Astonishing though it now appears to me, I recall learning to write by using old-fashioned pen with a ...

Paris is by far the best city in the world for cinema. At least, it is the best city known to me; perhaps Irkutsk or Conakry are better, though I rather doubt it. You could see two or three interesting films a day in Paris for the rest of your life, if you had the time and energy (in fact, I once ...