I worked with Stanley Kubrick for almost a year back in 1990, trying to develop the screen story for his project 'Artificial Intelligence,' which is about a robot boy who wishes to become a real boy, a future scientific fairy tale inspired in the myth of Pinocchio.

I think it's safe to say that 'manliness' was a common theme in my upbringing. It was an assumed status, but - and here's the important bit - it was the Rudyard Kipling kind. The emphasis was on gentlemanly conduct, sportsmanship, fairness and stoicism.

People with a lot of money aren't in the business of throwing it away, and those paying footballers' wages, organising parking spaces for dead sharks, and even, dare I say it, buying iPads, are doing it because, for them, it's worth the money.

Dad's funeral was standing room only; most in attendance were strangers to me. At the back, a lone Marine stood silently, then left. People told me he'd saved their life or helped them in their darkest hour.

These people were well dressed in skins, had some guns, but armed generally with bows and arrows and such other instruments of war as are common among the Indians of the Missouri.

No Arab ruler will consider the peace process seriously so long as he is able to toy with the idea of achieving more by the way of violence.

If you want to fight a war on drugs, sit down at your own kitchen table and talk to your own children.

The generation which lived through the Second World War is disappearing. Post-war generations see Europe's great achievements - liberty, peace and prosperity - as a given.