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

My kind publishers, Toby Mundy and Margaret Stead of Atlantic Books, have commissioned me to write the life of Queen Victoria.

In general, Hitler embodied the view of any popular newspaper.

History does not eliminate grievances. It lays them down like landmines.

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.

Watching a whole cluster of friends, and my own mother, die over quite a short space of time convinced me that purely materialist 'explanations' for our mysterious human existence simply won't do - on an intellectual level.

I'm like Jane Austen - I work on the corner of the dining table.