I've committed myself to serve my constituents in South Shields and I have committed myself to British politics.

I'm highly political. I spend an awful lot of time in the U.S. trying to influence decision-makers. But I don't feel in tune with British politics.

There's a tradition in British intellectual life of mocking any non-political force that gets involved in politics especially within the sphere of the arts and the theatre.

One thing I have frankly decided is that when it comes to political reform we have two conservative parties in British politics. Both the Labour and Conservative parties have constantly and repeatedly failed to honour promises they have made about reforming cleaning modernising our clapped-out system.

I definitely wish to distinguish American poetry from British or other English language poetry.

As they say one thing led to another and ultimately the British and Irish governments asked me to serve as chairman of the peace negotiations which ironically began six years ago this week.

I didn't really see the British punk movement if that's what it was as wildly original because I had been listening so intently to all the New York music since 1973 really.

I've always said that Adele has turned so many people on to British singers - whether female singers or just like music from this country in general.

I was never too keen on the British music press. They've called us a supermarket hype and they used to suggest that we didn't write our own songs.

The guy that made me wanna make movies... and this is off the wall-is a guy named Michael Pal the British director.

In a few days an officer came to our camp under a flag of truce and informed Hamilton then a captain of artillery but afterwards the aid of General Washington that Captain Hale had been arrested within the British lines condemned as a spy and executed that morning.

The United States dollar took another pounding on German French and British exchanges this morning hitting the lowest point ever known in West Germany.

I was shocked by the amount of Welsh people in L.A. We'd go to this British pub to watch the 'Six Nations' early in the morning and I remember the first time I walked in it was just a sea of red.

Marriage commissioners who choose not to marry homosexuals are being fired. A Knights of Columbus chapter in British Columbia is in court because it chooses not allow a lesbian group to use its facility for marriage ceremonies. The list goes on.

The British system had requirements including Latin. I'm not positive you ever had to know Greek but there are certainly kinds of curricula where you had to know Greek too. I think in Britain there was the most mindless repetitive sort of learning.

World War II had been such a tremendous success story for this country that the political and military leadership began to assume that they would prevail simply because of who they were. We were like the British at the turn of the 19th century.

The test of leadership for David Cameron was actually to bring the British Conservative Party back in to the mainstream.

Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is 'The Book of British Birds ' and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.

The skills of the British intelligence community are a great national asset.

The 'Robben Island Bible' has arrived at the British Museum. It's a garish thing its cover plastered with pink and gold Hindu images designed to hide its contents. Within is the finest collection of words generated by human intelligence: the complete works of William Shakespeare.

I've always wanted to be a spy and frankly I'm a little surprised that British intelligence has never approached me.

I guess something that I've noticed from American acts who had success in touring is more of an explanation as to their music. Which is I think quite funny. I think British acts might like to leave more to the imagination - maybe a bit more obscure perhaps - a bit more shy.

I really wouldn't want to live in America. I found New York claustrophobic and dirty. I missed England when I was there simple things like smells and the British sense of humor.

I think at its best the American sense of humor is the same as the British sense of humor at its best which is to be wry and ironic and self deprecating.