John Cornwell

I'm very impressed by the imagery in the 'Apologia', which is a kind of sustained poem. It's not just a piece of apologetics of the sort you find in Jesuit literature: 'Why I came over', and so on. It's a tremendously rewarding book but requires perseverance on the part of the reader.

There was a time when papal encyclicals were treated as virtual pronouncements of papal infallibility. There are still a small minority of Catholics who cite Pope Paul VI's 1968 document Humanae Vitae - which outlawed artificial birth control - as the word of God.

Research shows that if patients believe they are taking the real drug, they are more confident of improving and, so, improve even if they are actually on the placebo. Conversely, if they suspect they are taking the placebo, their expectancy of improvement declines, and so does their improvement.

Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man - the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined.

The question is not whether Tibet should be independent but the extent of the autonomy that it is allowed. Tibet has been firmly ensconced as part of the Chinese empire since the Qing dynasty's military intervention in Tibet in the early 18th century.