I had lost faith in biography.

The really clever people now want to be lawyers or journalists.

One symptom of his (Hitler) being strangely at variance with reality, or the nature of things,was his gift for wearing inappropriate of ludicrous clothing...When he was supposed to be starting a militaristic revolution he was wearing evening dress and an ill-fitting black tailcoat...and his army medals.

We tell ourselves that God is dead, when what we mean is that God is Dad, and we wish him dead.

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.

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

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.