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Midnight in Shoreditch, and snaking round the brickwork of old east London is a line of chattering clubbers. Everyone seems to be queuing for something here: a new restaurant, or a new microbrewery. Inside the club, hipster students, bearded professionals and wealthy tourists fill the dance floor. I easily spot the drug dealers weaving in and out of the throng, full of entrepreneurial determination. Conspicuous, too, is the queue of clubbers waiting for the toilet. I feel a tap on my shoulder. ‘Mate, need any gear?’ I glance down to a hand clutching a bag of powder. I tell him I’ll pass, thanks. He doesn’t look disappointed; business is good. Two miles up the road in nearby Hackney, there were several more stabbings last week.

Smiley face. Sad face. Smoochy face. Sick face. Edvard Munch ‘Scream’ face. How are you feeling today? Any of the above? When I worked as a teacher at a Saturday school for children who were struggling with English and maths, my pupils, all of whom were primary school age, had two emotions: they were ‘good’ (breaktime) or they were ‘sad’ (seven times table, spelling test). Sometimes, when teaching one-on-one, working our way through cat, cat, cats and mat, mat, mats, with the boys who were furthest behind, I would ask: ‘How do you feel about school?’ They would say: ‘I feel sad.’ But they didn’t mean that. They meant: I feel frustrated. I feel thwarted. I feel ashamed, persecuted, wronged, neglected.

Just over a year ago, my best friend dropped dead. He was in his early sixties and many of us expected him to die, because he was hugely overweight and desperately unhappy — and the ciggies can’t have helped. ‘If you don’t look after yourself, we’re going to lose you,’ was the polite refrain from those who knew him well. Chris had no money, no real job, precious little hope. We first met as new boys aged eight at our boarding school, where he went on to become one of the best sportsmen the school had ever had and sat a scholarship for Harrow. Early success might have played a part in what was to come. We all know people who peak prematurely. On leaving school, Chris and I and then shared a tent while hitchhiking through Canada and America.

In May 1968, civil unrest, bordering on revolution, exploded on to the streets of Paris. Student protesters and striking workers brought France’s economy to a standstill. President Charles de Gaulle warned of civil war. The Spectator’s then editor, Nigel Lawson, asked Nancy Mitford for a diary on the unfolding drama, which she followed from her house, about a mile from Versailles. This is an edited extract. 16 May We have heard the young leaders of the revolution on TV for three quarters of an hour. Having said how much they despised everything in life, especially money, they keenly gave the numbers of their bank accounts so that we could hurry out and send them some. There was a great deal of wailing about their treatment by the police. I despise them for it.

Have you ever thrown something away and then realised that you needed it? Surely all of us have done so. There is even a collective noun for such items in The Meaning of Liff by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd: ‘nottage.’ However, it is not just people who have nottage, but governments as well. Last week, we learned how the Home Office in October 2010 had destroyed thousands of landing card slips recording the arrival by boat of immigrants into this country. These slips, stored in the basement of an anonymous tower block, had been particularly useful for Home Office caseworkers when seeking to prove how long somebody had been resident in the UK.