According to Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief, Bush was so obsessed with Iraq that he failed to take action against Osama Bin Laden despite repeated warnings from his intelligence experts.

We are also further than ever from equality of opportunity.

A majority in all parties do, I think, want to see local government recover its old vigour and independence.

One of the unsung freedoms that go with a free press is the freedom not to read it.

I like 'Goodbye My Lover' because it's a really personal song and I recorded it in my landlady's bathroom in Los Angeles. She had a piano in there and for me listening back to it, it actually sounds like the voice I hear in my head. It's so close to what I can imagine.

I lost my second marriage because of drinking, and I loved the woman very much. But I thought I needed booze to write. I'm glad I was disabused.

In love, somehow, a man's heart is always either exceeding the speed limit, or getting parked in the wrong place.

The main business of a lawyer is to take the romance, the mystery, the irony, the ambiguity out of everything he touches.