Alexander Cockburn

England in the late 1940s was famously grim. As I remember it, London back then was a very dirty place, from coal dust and smoke, from the grit stirred up every day by the jackhammers still clearing out rubble from the Blitz.

Be careful about Burma. Most people cannot remember whether it was Siam and has become Thailand, or whether it is now part of Malaysia and should be called Sri Lanka.

Pose a political threat to Business As Usual, and sooner or later, mostly sooner, someone will try to kill you.

They keep telling us that in war truth is the first casualty, which is nonsense since it implies that in times of peace truth stays out of the sick bay or the graveyard.

A childish soul not inoculated with compulsory prayer is a soul open to any religious infection.

Wear the badge of environmental radicalism, and you're a citizen automatically under suspicion.

The First Law of Journalism: to confirm existing prejudice, rather than contradict it.

The travel writer seeks the world we have lost - the lost valleys of the imagination.