About 20 per cent of the population of Cyprus is Muslim, so I’ve watched with particular interest the recent violent reaction by some Muslims to an amateur film, made in America, which mocks Islam.

Gore Vidal first visited Australia in 1974, and lunched with Prime Minister Whitlam at the Lodge, where they sparred jocularly over the historical accuracy of Vidal’s novel about the Roman Emperor, Julian. Vidal was much taken with Gough, though he remarked that it was difficult to preserve the line between vanity and overweening vanity. The same could be said of Vidal himself.

The first time I visited China I was a bag carrier for the then Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser. It was August 1982. Frankly, the place was forbidding. There were few pedestrians on the streets, people dressed in the uniformly drab Mao suits and there were thousands upon thousands of bicycles. The streets of Beijing were wide and empty.

Talk about a miscalculation. I was in New York on UN business recently and found myself at a spare end for the weekend. I decided I would go to Niagara Falls. I’ve always wondered if they are as magnificent as they sound. So I hired a car and set off. Now, Niagara Falls are in New York State so it couldn’t be too far, I judged. I judged wrong. Very wrong. It took me seven-and-a-half hours to get there and – in a storm and rush hour traffic – nine-and-a-half to get back to Manhattan.

In my family, we love holidays and who can blame us? This year, we booked a week with friends on the Greek island of Corfu. We arrived on the 18th of June, which is the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo.