When Christians start thinking about Jesus, things start breaking down, they lose their faith. It's perfectly possible to go to church every Sunday and not ask any questions, just because you like it as a way of life. They fear that if they ask questions they'll lose their Christ, the very linchpin of their religion.

It is remarkable how easily children and grown-ups adapt to living in a dictatorship organised by lunatics.

Everyone writes in Tolstoy's shadow, whether one feels oneself to be Tolstoyan or not.

We, while noting many things amiss about Victorian society, more often sense them judging us.

I don't write books inadvertently.

It is eerie being all but alone in Westminster Abbey. Without the tourists, there are only the dead, many of them kings and queens. They speak powerfully and put my thoughts into vivid perspective.

I was once naïve enough to ask the late Duke of Devonshire why he liked the town of Eastbourne. He replied with a self-deprecating shrug that one of the things he liked was that he owned it.