Reporters have to use their imagination, really put themselves in the shoes of the person they want to interview.

In my case, I got hit a lot by bullies when I was a child, and so I naturally bristle against anybody who abuses power. And that seems to make me rather persistent when it comes to exposing the abuse of power.

I spent two years working on building sites, working on the railways as a guard and in a racing stable, exercising racehorses. I learnt to build relationships. The experience of not being stuck in some middle-class bubble taught me things that being at university hadn't.

It's the tabloids, with their intense commercial need to get scoops to bring in readers, that run a regime of fear, where reporters are bullied, shouted at. That's where things go wrong.

You don't get shouted at at the 'Guardian.' Nobody bullies you at the paper; nobody tells you what to write. Now, I love working in that atmosphere; I am free to research and write what I want.

The Murdoch-owned 'Sunday Times' has an appalling history of involvement in illegal activity. And it's because they're Sunday papers; they're trying to get scoops that the dailies haven't got.

Something very worrying has been going on at Scotland Yard. We now know that in dealing with the phone-hacking affair at the 'News of the World,' they cut short their original inquiry; suppressed evidence; misled the public and the press; concealed information and broke the law. Why?

On first acquaintance, the mystery of the Mayans of Guatemala can seem simply bizarre, as it was when I first encountered Maximon the god.

Julian Assange is self-consciously an individual. He thinks in his own way, primarily as a physicist, having studied pure maths and physics at university in Australia where he grew up.

A trial deals with only a limited amount of information, considering only the evidence which is available and also admissible and which relates directly to the charges on the indictment.