“... times, one of them a ram-raid; so, coming away, I’m perhaps more conscious of vandalism and urban decay than I otherwise might be. The result is, when I see a starved-looking boy of ten and his sister, twelve or so, tugging at a bollard round some roadworks before sending it flying, I wind down the window and say primly: ‘That’s a pretty silly thing ...”

“... At least that is one point of view. Another – shared by the police, by Kenneth Clarke and by Sir Hugh Annesley, the Chief Constable of Northern Ireland – is that it is outmoded and favours the guilty, and should be scrapped because it is routinely exploited by clever criminals and terrorists. (Annesley has even suggested that refusal to answer police ...”

“... If this happens in the metropolis, imagine the colonies. And Havana was the nearest Latin city to urban America – unless you want to insult Tijuana and call it a city. Before 1960 there were a few private houses but these mostly published textbooks. Other adventurous printers, whom you could equate with gigolos, were engaged in some kind of vanity ...”