Successful state schools work because charismatic heads or teachers are terrific bluffers, giving the impression that they are to be feared while knowing in their hearts that they have no real power.

When I rather guiltily read the books on which the TV series 'Game Of Thrones' is based, I was struck by one thing. The whole point of this saga is that ruthlessness pays, that evil generally wins, that justice is non-existent, and utter cynicism the only wisdom. It is the Middle Ages without the saving grace of Christianity.

Gleeful, unembarrassed ruthlessness, once rightly kept in check, has become normal among us, and 'Game Of Thrones' is a success because this change is now more or less complete.

The Channel is an international waterway through which the Russians are quite free to pass - and over which we have no exclusive right.

The self-righteous supporters of mass immigration think the rest of us are stupid and evil.

What many of us object to is the politicians who, for whatever reason, forget that societies cannot easily absorb huge numbers of new citizens. I resent the suggestion that this perfectly reasonable view is motivated by racial hatred or personal spite.

Actually, I never wanted an E.U. referendum, and I think those who called for it will one day wish they hadn't.

The world's poor have discovered that the E.U. (that's the country we live in, no point pretending there's anywhere called Britain any more) has absolutely no clue how to stop determined immigrants.

Thanks to centuries of island freedom, when we were able to decide who came in and who didn't, it is far easier to disappear in Britain than in almost any other country in the world.

I'm surprised that more people don't emulate Rachel Dolezal and pretend to be black or members of some other minority. Our gullible society rushes to reward such status, often with jobs and money.

As far as our rulers in Brussels are concerned, Her Majesty can stand for the European Parliament and vote in the elections for it. She doesn't, but she could.

The safest period of my lifetime was the Cold War, when Europe was more sharply divided than ever.

Without doubt, the Queen's personal acceptance of her role as a loyal E.U. servant was one of the great symbolic moments of our history. A bit like Magna Carta, but backwards.

When I lived in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., I was rather proud that my landlord was almost the only African-American in my unofficially segregated neighbourhood (the other one was the adopted child of our admirable next-door neighbours).

I still don't understand why we need a gigantic airport sprawled across South East England. What does it gain us, compared with the misery of noise, pollution and congestion it causes in our cramped country? Would it really be so bad if we had to take a train to Paris or Amsterdam to fly to the U.S.A.?

Work, especially if you're lucky in what you do, is one of the great pleasures of life, but - like all pleasures - it can become selfish.

The Left have always preferred the state to the family.

Average male pay is higher than average female pay for a simple reason. Despite decades of enforced equality, women still have babies, and men still don't. So women who wish to spend any substantial time at all with their own offspring will fall behind in their careers, and their earnings will be less.

Instead of trying to bring freedom to the Arab world, couldn't we just concentrate on trying to fend off the European Union and defending our own porous borders?

Freedom of speech, for those who don't accept multiculturalism or the sexual revolution, is increasingly limited, mainly by threats to the jobs of those who speak out of turn.

If you are foolish enough to defend your own home against burglary, expect to be arrested, fingerprinted, DNA-swabbed, and probably charged.

A serious dose of unemployment and a spate of bank failures can make the unelectable electable quite quickly.

I'm always a bit suspicious of the sort of person who argues by saying 'What would Jesus have said?' They usually mean that they are quite sure Jesus would have agreed with them.

Nowhere in the Beatitudes did Jesus say, 'Blessed are the queue-jumpers,' trying to gain an advantage at the expense of others. This is what the people at Calais are.

The giant fraud that is Britain's education system strides ever onwards, messing up many more lives than it improves.

If it's for everyone, it's not exclusive.

All serious elite institutions, from the great London clubs to the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, have always made sure that most people can't get into them. That's the point.

What we need and have not got at Westminster are real experience and wisdom, possessed by people who do not view politics as a career.

Britain is a desirable place to live mainly because it is an island, which most people can't get to.

Most of the really successful civilisations survived because they were protected from invasion by mountains, sea, deserts, or a combination of these things. Ask the Russians or the Poles what it's like to live without the shield of the sea.

Do not underestimate Jeremy Corbyn.

I dislike many of Mr Corbyn's opinions - his belief in egalitarianism and high taxation, his enthusiasm for comprehensive schools, his readiness to talk to terrorists, and his support for the E.U.

I've grown tired of people impersonating world-weary cynics by intoning the old saying 'My enemy's enemy is my friend' as if it were a new-minted witticism.

Comprehensive schools, as too few understand, have never been designed to improve education.

The Church of England hasn't often produced great men in modern times. But I have long believed that George Bell, Bishop of Chichester from 1929 to 1958, was such a man.

Real conservatives are in favour of all kinds of unelected power and authority.

I wonder how many illegal migrants fanned out across the country while I and others were subjected to the stone-faced, suspicious inefficiency of the Border Force?

Terror works by surprise.

All we have and are is based on the Christian faith, which has shaped law, government, morals, music, landscape, and education here for a thousand years.

Every educated and intelligent person glories in the freedom of women in Western societies to exercise their talents to the full and their freedom to walk safely in the streets of our great cities.

If migrants from other cultures arrive too fast and in numbers too great for society to absorb and integrate them, they begin to impose those cultures on the host country.

Radical multicultural types will, in the end, destroy the things they claim to like, because they don't understand that liberty and reasonable equality are features of stable, free, conservative societies based on Christian ideas, which guard their borders and are proud of their civilisation.

How I shall miss Alan Rickman, his beautiful command of English, and a voice he played like a musical instrument.

Direct Grants, private schools which took huge numbers of state pupils, involved effective co-operation between state and private sectors - a thing all modern governments claim they want. So why were they abolished? And why aren't they now restored?

Revolutions are all based on the false idea that humans and their nature can be changed.

I ride a bicycle daily in London and have done for many years.

If you are funny, people will like you. A lot of advertising is based on this simple rule. The Tory MP Boris Johnson has benefited a lot from it.

If you claim to represent and speak for the people, and they are forced to pay your salary, you have a duty to experience life as near as possible to the way others live it.

Female politicos mostly represent a rather militant faction.

I can't say I'm sorry to see that the name 'Nigel' is dying out, but I'd be happier if it wasn't being replaced by made-up names out of TV series 'Game Of Thrones.'