Those Victorians: endlessly fascinating, broad in their learning, heroic in their achievements, in parts completely mad.

The IRA sending a message of sympathy to America is like Jack the Ripper giving us a lesson in the sanctity of human life.

Of the 664 men who rode into the Valley of Death about 540 eventually got out of it again. By far the highest casualty rate was among the horses. Compared with the Somme or an evening in the Blitz, the Valley of Death was a piece of cake.

If there is writing on Hadrian's Wall, it reads that the English should leave Scotland to its own devices.

Football is not, in my view, a sport: it is somewhere between a business racket and a mental illness. I associate it with all the worst aspects of our society - violence, drunkenness, drugs, racism, exploitation, greed and stupidity and that's just for starters.