You see, before I became prime minister, the Australian prime minister only attended ever two meetings in the world: the British Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and the South Pacific Forum.
No one will expect the British Government or the Government of India to give way to threats of violence, disorder and chaos; and, indeed, representatives of large sections of Indian opinion have expressly warned us that we must not do so.
This sympathy is not translated into force against the British government because it is not like the anti- apartheid movement which had a high profile here and Mandela is a more engaging figure than Yasser Arafat.
Things have changed so much, with Facebook and Twitter. Everyone is so much more accessible these days: no British athlete has ever experienced what we are experiencing now. It's such a unique situation with the home Olympics.
British actors wear wigs a lot. I find it to be a nice ritual at the end of the day, take the wig off, clean the makeup off, go home, leave work behind me.
All the things that are part of your heritage make you British - that makes this country what it is. It's part of your history. And here, unlike America, it's still living history.
'What if?' history is a tricky game, but there is no doubt that the senior planners of D-Day - including Eisenhower and the British general Bernard Montgomery - believed that the Double Cross operation had played a pivotal role in the victory.
Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.
The long-established and noble rule of Law, one of the greatest products of the character and tradition of British history, has suffered a deadly blow. Blackmail has become respectable.
The thinking was that so long as the British kept our basic documents in their hands and so long as they kept the formal right to change them, changes in our system would be careful and deliberate.
The fact is that a car used by Gerry Adams and myself during the course of the Mitchell review was bugged by elements within British military intelligence.
Chum was a British boy's weekly which, at the end of the year was bound into a single huge book; and the following Christmas parents bought it as Christmas presents for male children.
My dad's family is part British and Austrian, and my mother's family is from Goa, which is in the south of India. I looked different from everyone else, which now is such a blessing. It was harder at the beginning of my career.
My father was a headmaster in England and then the dean of a college in Australia. We moved there when I was about five, so my education was in Australia, and I always felt I was Australian even though my passport was British.
King Louis Philippe once said to me that he attributed the great success of the British nation in political life to their talking politics after dinner.
There's definitely a pattern of great British shows that get reinvented in America and do really well here, but I think 'Torchwood' is a bit different. It's more of a hybrid that doesn't exist as a reinvention.
However, I began to submit poems to British magazines, and some were accepted. It was a great moment to see my first poems published. It felt like entering a tradition.
After college, I funded my short films with acting roles in film and TV. I learned my craft through the great opportunities British television gave me as a director.
And I was asked if I would come and help with the recovery of this great British company, Cable and Wireless, and I'm delighted to become part of the new and very talented management that have been brought in to that company as well.
Americans enjoy uniformity in a way that the British don't; they wanted everybody of a sort of nice chorus line height and here I was, this person who was a good three inches taller than anyone else on the end of the line.
I began thinking there should be an American phrase book, 'cause I've got an Italian phrase book, and an Arabic one... now a British one. I think it'd be pretty good to have an American phrase book.
