I want to sound a note that at first appears incongruous or frivolous but is in fact deeply relevant, namely, how the habitual lie seeps into the national character and becomes an inalienable part of it.

Great Britain finally gave up the ghost in the early days of this rainy March, but I shall not now dwell on the immediate cause of her passing, which was, of course, the extirpation of hereditary peerage in the House of Lords.

Don’t you know there’s a war on, as the reprimand went in the last big one. Detached from reality though I am by disposition, I ought to acknowledge that yes, something like a war is going on there, in fact more than one.