Those who really value Ukrainian sovereignty should opt for real independence and a positive neutrality: neither a plaything of the West nor Moscow.

I was in my mid-teens when someone gave me a copy of 'Pears Encyclopaedia of Myth and Legends' as a birthday present. It sat on my shelves for many months before I looked at it. When I did, I couldn't stop reading it.

The patchwork political landscape of the Arab world - the client monarchies, degenerated nationalist dictatorships, and the imperial petrol stations known as the Gulf states - was the outcome of an intensive experience of Anglo-French colonialism.

In the Seventies, we still had dreams and hopes of Utopia, but by the end of the decade, the world had shifted to the right.

Independence is the only way Scotland can realise its full political and cultural potential in the 21st century.

The weakness in traditional Scottish nationalism lay in its own inability to grasp that identity could not be the only factor in the march to independence.

I was never totally what we would now call 'politically correct,' even in my most militant phase. I always liked good food, good wines. I suppose it was because I had total confidence in myself.