Why doesn’t Stephen Fry boycott the Saudis as well as the Russians? 

Call me sentimental, but I’ve never seen a better opening ceremony than the Sochi one, evoking Russia’s great past in literature and in many other things. The ballet sequence was tops, especially the acrobatics by the black-clad dancer portraying the cruel officer in War and Peace who seduced Natasha. All those hysterics about boycotts and terrorism, they were just hypocritical sensationalism by those PC jerks that seem to be running our lives nowadays.

We westerners are averse to any discipline, impervious to duty, and disinclined to belong to a nation. We owe allegiance only to ourselves and love only ourselves. Not so over in Russia, where there’s a mystic connection between the nation and every single man and woman born there. Never underestimate the love of Russians for the land of Pushkin and Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and Chekhov. I could go on and on. As it happens, I’m reading Brian Moynahan’s Leningrad book, reviewed in The Spectator last month.