It is hard to think of anything which more tragically and clearly exemplifies the phenomenon of good political intentions achieving the precise opposite of their aim.

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

On the rare occasions when I spend a night in Oxford, the keeping of the hours by the clock towers in New College, and Merton, and the great booming of Tom tolling 101 times at 9 pm at Christ Church are inextricably interwoven with memories and regrets and lost joys. The sound almost sends me mad, so intense are the feelings it evokes.

I believe the collapse of the House of Windsor is tied in with the collapse of the Church of England.

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

I had lost faith in biography.

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.