Gavin Esler
The Cold War, Bosnia and Ukraine remind us that peace is fragile. Iraq and Syria remind us that no society or culture is immune from conflict.Collection: Peace
What mattered in the cold war was weight - how big are your missiles? How heavy are your tanks? What matters in globalisation is speed. How fast is your modem? How good are you communications?Collection: War
Privacy is dead. We live in a world of instantaneous, globalised gossip. The idea that there is a 'private' sphere and a 'public' sphere for world leaders, politicians or anyone in the public eye is slowly disintegrating. The death of privacy will have a profound effect on who our leaders will be in the future.
When I visit universities in the U.A.E., the U.S. and across Europe, I see the faces of the leaders of tomorrow.
Anyone who goes through divorce goes through a very hard time.
Funerals should celebrate a life.
Rich, poor, white, people of colour, are all equally irreplaceable.
My father was a member of the Dunkirk Veterans Association.
World leaders and major political figures have often had delusions of grandeur.
My taste in coffee has got better with age, and so has my taste in music.
Nobody is infallible, but it is important to have trusted guides when it comes to information.
I have a long connection with Kent and Canterbury and I hope to help other young men and women to achieve their ambitions through a wonderful university experience.
Grits really are food for the soul.
Viewers don't like rudeness, but they like us to be persistent.
My first day at Duddingston Primary is probably my first memory.
We're never encouraged by the producers to ask questions in any way. The most important thing to be is authentic and to be yourself. If I feel someone has answered a question then I'll move on. If I feel it's important enough, I will pursue the question.
Maybe I should declare a bias. I like Americans. Always have. Always will.
Personally, I hope that we British continue to criticise America - just as I hope Americans will criticise us. That is what friends do.
Americans, apparently, either do nothing about the world's problems, in which case they are ignorant and isolationist, selfish and gutless, or they try to do something about the world's problems, in which case they are arrogant and naive, greedy and bullying.
There is a common British delusion that we 'understand' America. We don't. Watching 'Friends' listening to Bruce Springsteen, eating at McDonald's and visiting Disneyland does not do it.
A British politician who cloaks himself in the mantle of God is immediately regarded with suspicion.
In Britain, politicians who openly discuss their spirituality are about as welcome as Jehovah' s Witnesses on the doorstep, and the British associate the mixture of politics and religion as a heady cocktail best reserved for the mass irrationality of Northern Ireland, Iran, Kashmir, and the Middle East.
The very idea of a Party of God, Hizbollah, puts the fear of God into British hearts.
American elections have usually turned on the issues of war, peace and the economy.
Ronald Reagan offered us an international vision divided between the free world and the evil empire. Even if this was a cartoonish view, it helped us make sense of everything from Star Wars to industrial policy.
Mini-skirts, Prada and Agnes B are for New York and L.A. Washington is more America's equivalent of Marks & Spencer.
Public displays of puritanical religiosity mask the private perversions of the real Washington behind closed doors.
With Bill Clinton, his lawyers always wanted him to say nothing about the Lewinsky scandal. Defendant Clinton had the right to remain silent. But President Clinton had a completely different need - political survival. That meant, in the end, that he needed to trumpet his supposed innocence and talk publicly to the American people.
In the Stephen Sondheim song, when something bad happens in the circus, they send in the clowns. In America's political circus, they send in the lawyers.
Once upon a time, America was a self-reliant John Wayne society where a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Now, America has become an over-lawyered society where nobody takes responsibility for mistakes because it is more profitable to claim victimhood and reach for a lawyer.
Doctors, dentists and nurses commonly take out malpractice insurance to pay for lawsuits. The trend has expanded to include hairdressers, accountants, vets, sports umpires and members of the clergy, all fearful of being sued for wrongful action or advice.
The U.S. Constitution has absorbed the end of slavery, the Civil War, Civil Rights and Watergate.
My idea of heaven is being in Arizona, stuck up a mountain - somewhere where there are no phones.
I'm not anti-American. But I am very strongly anti American bacon - the worst bacon in the world.
Presidents at the end of their second term - Reagan with the Iran-contra affair, Clinton with Monica Lewinsky - often find they are bedevilled by hostile Congressional investigations.
Whether anyone has ever changed their mind as a result of a celebrity endorsement of a candidate is a bit of a mystery.
In the 2016 U.S. presidential election, celebrity endorsements possibly damaged Hillary Clinton, since they allowed Donald Trump to emphasise that she was part of an out-of-touch elite. That is ironic, given that Mr Trump owed his election victory to his own celebrity status on a TV reality show.
A celebrity can gain attention in our otherwise busy lives. And celebrity sells.
Let me say it up front: I don't like bad hair or capes. I'm not into witches, warlocks or elves. I would never try to claim prog rock is cool. But I love it. And I know I'm not the only one.
It's perhaps easier to say what prog rock isn't than what it is: it's not three-minute pop songs, it's not straightforward rock, metal, blues or jazz, but can have elements of all them and more. It's a form that is on the boundaries of many different forms, that is open to all sorts of influences.
There's no doubt that prog rock has an image problem: many musicians hate the label, and too many people associate it with 10-minute drum solos and the weirder bits of JRR Tolkien.
Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull is now a good friend, and the thing that strikes you about him is that he's all about details.
If we have to put music into baskets, then the progressive rock bands I fell in love with as a teenager made sounds that shaded into jazz, folk, metal, and in the case of the wonderful (and sadly missed) Jon Lord, modern classical music.
For me, prog rock has always been essentially British. It combines all our great and eccentric genius. We are not hung up on categories, rules and classification. We love people who break the mould, challenge us and make us think differently.
I remember politicians in Northern Ireland were sometimes called 'verbal incendiarists,' as they didn't actually do anything but they said certain things. So when you hear certain politicians using nasty language, that colours our lives. It makes some other people think it's OK to racially abuse people.
I've never been a fan of party politics.
Maybe because I've worked in the BBC for so long I am completely allergic to meetings.
A magazine once asked my favourite beauty product and I said water.
I have my mother's nose and my father's bone structure, which I've passed on to my children. My eldest daughter and my mother, when she was young, could be sisters.
I can be incredibly stubborn and I'm not sure how that reflects in my looks. The family name is German and translates as donkey! If I think I'm right, I hope I don't seem grumpy.