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The people of Iraq might disagree over the entertainment factor. The British Labour Party (certainly in Parliament) has been Tory Lite for some time. It's obsessed with the market and with privatisation, and has lost its way and stopped listening to what people actually want. And the Tory...

Prohibition doesn't really have much of a good record, does it? Legalise drugs. Make them available for sale from proper outlets and tax them as with drugs that are currently available legally, tobacco and alcohol. You stop making it so 'sexy' and daring to youngsters in particular, and you...

Like Stewart and Silverseason, I'm surprised that The Remains of the Day isn't included. I haven't read that particular Rushdie – although it's frequently raved about, by readers and critics alike (if you'll forgive the differentiation) – but I did enjoy Oscar and Lucinda.

~~LOL~~ In similar mode, if it was just one, I'd opt for Otto von Bismarck, since I consider him to have been a fascinating, complex character, who was far from the simplistic, warmongering Junker that he has been portrayed as in the West since WWII (when it suddenly became fashionable to...

Damned right too! Bloody Tykes are nothing but trouble.

This starts with having some hilarious definitions of "rock bands". I mean, come on – Abba are not a "rock" act and "rock" and 'pop' are not synonymous. ~~LOL~~ As for Oasis – certainly not the best, but What's the Story? is a brilliant album. Boomtown Rats? Come on, they wouldn't get into a...

Presumably, all children who received or receive corporal punishment from the parents/teachers etc go on to become fully-adjusted and well-behaved, law-abiding adults. While all those who didn't, go on to become trouble-causers and criminals. Are the prisons full of people who never had a...

My thoughts: Perfume by Patrick Süskind Patrick Süskind's novel is an extraordinary read; an onslaught against the senses almost from the opening words, as he conjures an olfactory description of 18th century Paris to make the mind whirl. And there is little let up from then on, as we...

A few favourites: Lone trumpeter on Brighton beach. Bloomsbury, London. Pearly King, Covent Garden, London Le Tour Eiffel, Paris. The Willis Building, with Lloyd's reflected in it. City of London. 'The Gherkin', City of London. La Pedrera, Barcelona. Jack. Millennium...

Okay. Self portrait.

Pavane always gets classed as sci-fi. See book 99 in the rankings.

Indeed. The Westbro Baptist Church, for instance, declared that Katrina was the result of gay rights. They also prayed for the missing Swedes in the Asian tsunami to be dead, because Sweden has a good record on gay rights. Westbro is extreme – but it's not alone in seeing God's hand in various...

Thank for the comments, one and all. :)

Why I am not a Christian by Bertrand Russell.

Hogfather was a two-part film, made and screened by Sky in Christmas 2006 in the UK. Personally, I dreaded it – how do you do justice to Pratchett? – but found much to enjoy. Tragically, Ian Richardson, who wonderfully voiced death, died last year. The Colour of Magic has been filmed by the...

By the way ... you can be a secularist and a religious person.

As with Steffee – the average UK footprint is, apparently, 9.8 tonnes. Mine is about 5.627. I don't drive or ride a motorcycle. I do fly – it'll probably be twice this year, to Barcelona in August for my main holiday and to Glasgow for a wedding in late September, because I am absolutely not...

It was first published in 1954. So for instance, it was written later than, say, John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids, which is much more involving. Matheson also deals rather peculiarly with the issue of sex in the novel. He makes the decision to tell the reader that Neville is, in the first...

The unabridged Pepys? Which book have you read more times than any other?

And Mel Gibson could film it. With added violence. Here's a thing – imagine Bible stories rewritten by famous authors – well, that'd be most of the Old Testament by Stephen King. If anyone genuinely fancies a fun read based on the Bible, Gore Vidal's Live From Golgotha is wickedly amusing.