I Have Also Been Saddened, Though Hardly

If You Had Said To Anyone In 1945, At The End Of The Second World War With The Continent It Ruins, That You Could Have A European Union Of 28 Member States Stretching From Portugal In The West To Estonia In The East, All Of Them More-or-less Liberal Democracies - They Wouldn't Have Believed You.

The First Job Of The Historian And Of The Journalist Is To Find Facts. Not The Only Job, Perhaps Not The Most Important, But The First. Facts Are The Cobblestones From Which We Build Roads Of Analysis, Mosaic Tiles That We Fit Together To Compose Pictures Of Past And Present. There Will Be Disagreement About Where The Road Leads And What Reality Or Truth Is Revealed By The Mosaic Picture. The Facts Themselves Must Be Checked Against All The Available Evidence. But Some Are Round And Hard--and The Most Powerful Leaders In The World Can Trip Over Them. So Can Writers, Dissidents And Saints.

America Should Do A Reverse Columbus. The World No Longer Needs To Discover America; But America Urgently Needs To Discover The World's View Of America.

Developments In Information Technology And Globalised Media Mean That The Most Powerful Military In The History Of The World Can Lose A War, Not On The Battlefield Of Dust And Blood, But On The Battlefield Of World Opinion.

The Trouble Is That Privacy Is At Once Essential To, And In Tension With, Both Freedom And Security. A Cabinet Minister Who Keeps His Mistress In Satin Sheets At The French Taxpayer's Expense Cannot Justly Object When The Press Exposes His Misuse Of Public Funds. Our Freedom To Scrutinise The Conduct Of Public Figures Trumps That Minister's Claim To Privacy. The Question Is: Where And How Do We Draw The Line Between A Genuine Public Interest And That Which Is Merely What Interests The Public?