From ‘Some reflections of an alien enemy: the contradiction between being and feeling an Englishman, by a Czech’, The Spectator, 17 April 1915: What I most regret having lost is my previous unawareness of there being any difference between me and Englishmen. In saying we, I used to mean we English people; somehow or other
From ‘The Pope and the War’, The Spectator, 17 April 1915: The result of the war may prove that motives which we had supposed to be secured by Christianity are after all to be of little account in directing human actions. That is the situation stated without exaggeration. And in the world in which this
‘It’s a fake.’
‘I’ll have the cream tea – easy on the tea.’
‘We can’t vote for her — she wasn’t locally sourced.’
‘They’re moving the production to the Far East.’
‘They have so much in common.’
‘We’ve come up with the perfect scam to get the voters to trust us.’
‘Is it something I said, tweeted, retweeted, posted on Facebook, blogged, skyped, texted, snapchatted, emailed or facetimed?’
‘Wow! That service was quick.’
‘Post is late again.’
This is Jason, my ghostwriter. Jason, dear, she wants my autograph.’
The real road menace Sir: I write in anger after reading Mark Mason’s malicious attack on mobility scooters (‘Hell on wheels’, 11 April). The motorcar has, since its invention, killed many hundreds of thousands of innocent pedestrians. Meanwhile, whole tracts of our beautiful and productive countryside have been flattened or destroyed to accommodate its traffic.
Out of tune The use of a song, ‘Love Natural’ by the Crystal Fighters, at the launch of the Labour manifesto backfired when the band’s drummer urged people to vote Green instead. Some other campaign songs whose writers disowned the campaign: — Ronald Reagan used ‘Born in the USA’ by Bruce Springsteen for his re-election
