I said that although the customers of these shops are directly involved, ultimately it concerns everybody, and so it does. For it epitomises two tend… - Bernard Levin

The explosion of peaceful, mass revolt which has ended Soviet rule from Berlin to Bucharest - and will shortly end it also from Lvov to Vladivostok - was set off not by the eloquence of charismatic leaders, not by hatred of the oppressors, not by hope of gain, but by that tiny yet searing flame which is in us all, and which no Niagara of oppression, hunger or torture can ever extinguish.

We live in a querulous age; more, we live in an age in which it is argued that to be happy is frivolous, and expecting to be happy positively childish.

I became a journalist by accident, and stayed one. Just as well; I have no other talent whatever, even in the most modest and rudimentary form. I can't paint or compose or write novels; I couldn't be a businessman or financier; I would be impossible as a teacher and a disaster as an actor.