It doesn’t matter what the Lib Dem leader stands for, says Rod Liddle. In the era of X Factor politics, people can decide, on a whim, that he should be Prime MinisterIs Nick Clegg better than Winston Churchill, as a recent opinion poll seemed to suggest? The obvious answer is yes, of course — because Nick is still alive. Winston Churchill died in 1965 and I have the silver commemorative crown coin to prove it, and a very vague memory of standing somewhere crowded in central London with my mum and dad, watching his large coffin being loaded onto some riverboat.

When Anatoly Dobrynin died earlier this month, aged 90, the British press paid little notice. Yet it is increasingly clear that he was one of the most remarkable players in the Cold War — someone who did much to stop the conflict turning hot. Over 24 years he served as Soviet ambassador to six US Presidents — Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan. Perhaps his most telling contribution was his role in the period of détente during the stewardship of Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s all-powerful national security adviser, and later secretary of state.

The class system, with its fixed mealtimes, stopped us all from getting fat, says Andrew M. Brown. Today we are a nation of all-day munchers — and it showsImagine if, at breakfast, a mother were to offer her family, instead of cornflakes or boiled eggs, slices from a gigantic cake smothered in icing. Would that seem odd? Well, yes, it would: but that’s exactly what a lot of us do — eat cake for breakfast. A muffin is a cake by another name.