The same night, in a neighbouring palatial ruin, we saw a moon rise and in its light witnessed an exquisite display of Cambodian folk dancing, once a… - Tariq Ali

[On funders of the Black Dwarf newspaper] The other one was an armed-struggle potter, a woman called Fiona Armour-Brown, who lived in Wales. She was slightly over the top. She believed we should be setting up small terrorist groups – that wasn't the word used, but that's effectively what it was – in Wales and parts of Northern England, to challenge Labour. So we laughed her out of that one. But, again, she would send a cheque for a hundred quid, occasionally more – I think she'd inherited family money, too. Once when she came to the office I asked her why she was giving us this money. She said: "Politics – it’s the best paper around – but there’s also a personal thing involved."
"What’s that?" She said: "Once, I was standing by a cliff-edge on the French Riviera – I was very unhappy, don't ask why – when a guy rolled up on a motorbike, with a leather jacket, stopped, looked sternly at me and said: 'You’re not thinking of committing suicide, are you?' And I was so stunned I said: 'Well, that is what I was about to do.' He said, 'Don’t be silly! Come on, get on the back of my motorbike – I don’t have a spare helmet – and I’ll take you to the nearest town, and we'll sit down and get rid of this nonsense in your head.' That was Christopher Logue. 'So,' she said, 'I owe Christopher my life, and when I saw that he was also one of the founding editors of your magazine ...' I checked with Christopher, who said: 'Thank God I did it.'"

Revolutionary periods invariably encompass a huge fluctuation of political consciousness that can never be registered accurately by any referendum.

We live, after all, in a world where illusions are sacred and truth profane.