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.

As Hitler himself later enunciated, it matters not how idiotic the creed, what matters is the firmness with which it is enunciated.

If you know somebody is going to be awfully annoyed by something you write, that's obviously very satisfying, and if they howl with rage or cry, that's honey.

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

Since Einstein developed his theory of relativity, and Rutherford and Bohr revolutionised physics, our picture of the world has radically changed.

I don't think you can tell the objective truth about a person. That's why people write novels.

I think one of the very frightening things about the regime of the National Socialists is that it made people happy.