The North Korean capital, Pyongyang, is a city consecrated to the worship of a father-son dynasty. (I came to think of them, with their nuclear-family implications, as ‘Fat Man and Little Boy.’) And a river...

Time means a lot to me, paperwork wastes it, and I have always been a firm believer in my right to do anything I cannot be stopped from doing. Which sometimes entails not getting caught...

You are one of the few successful persons I know.””Me? Why?””You know precisely what you are doing and you do it well.””But I don’t really do much of anything.””And of course the quantity means nothing...

It was at a conference in Cyprus in 1976, where the theme was the rights of small nations, that I first met Edward Said. It was impossible not to be captivated by him: of his...