Like the British Constitution she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.

I receive huge support from Irish and British sports fans alike and it is greatly appreciated. Likewise I feel I have a great affinity with the American sports fans. I play most of my golf in the U.S. nowadays and I am incredibly proud to have won the U.S. Open and U.S. PGA Championship in the last two years.

The British are supposed to be particularly averse to intellectuals a prejudice closely bound up with their dislike of foreigners. Indeed one important source of this Anglo-Saxon distaste for highbrows and eggheads was the French revolution which was seen as an attempt to reconstruct society on the basis of abstract rational principles.

It turns out that understanding the British public is not rocket science. The British appreciate honesty and they also have a bonkers off-the-wall sense of humour like me.

Even modern English people are imperious superior ridden by class. All of the hypocrisy and the difficulties that are endemic in being British also make it an incredibly fertile place culturally. A brilliant place to live. Sad but true.

I think Bond the character is distinct: He's British he has a certain code that he lives by he's incorruptible... he's a classical hero but he's also fallible. He has inner demons inner conflicts and he's a romantic.

I hope that tomorrow we can all wherever we are join in expressing our grief at Diana's loss and gratitude for her all-too-short life. It is a chance to show to the whole world the British nation united in grief and respect.

I've always had great respect for Paddington because he is amusingly English and eccentric. He is a great British institution and my generation grew up with the books and then Michael Horden's animations.

The British nation is unique in this respect. They are the only people who like to be told how bad things are who like to be told the worst.

It was part of your religion to hate the British.