My grandfather was a general in the Nationalist Chinese Air Force during World War II and I grew up hearing the pilot stories and seeing pictures of him in uniform.

Look at what President Kennedy managed to achieve during the Cuban missile crisis. If Bush had been president in 1962 do you think he would have avoided a nuclear war?

When I was in Pulp I actively did more TV stuff because that was during the Great Britpop Wars and it seemed important to prove that indie people could speak. That war doesn't exist anymore.

So long as war is the main business of nations temporary despotism - despotism during the campaign - is indispensable.

During the Cold War we were interested because we were scared that Russia and the United States were going to go to war. We were scared that Russia was going to take over the world. Every country became a battleground.

I think I'm just someone that just tries to get by. I'm kind of - if it was during the Second World War I'd be a black marketeer I think.

I worked for MI6 in the Sixties during the great witch-hunts when the shared paranoia of the Cold War gripped the services.

During the Cold War we lived in coded times when it wasn't easy and there were shades of grey and ambiguity.

It is well known that in war the first casualty is truth - that during any war truth is forsaken for propaganda.

There's something brave and touching about game girls of all ages keeping themselves smart in hard times - one thinks of those wonderful women during World War II drawing stocking seams in eyebrow pencil up the back of legs stained with gravy browning because nylons were so hard to get hold of.