The big challenge is a suit not worn with a tie. To me, it's a very odd look. David Cameron and many of our British politicians have adopted this look. I think it is challenging for men to look chic in casual clothing. Most people just want to wear T-shirts and baggy shorts and don't really care, whereas in the old days people used to really dress well in their leisure time. The suit has become a victim of that. day to dress in an appropriate way.

My ambition is to one day shed my wardrobe and figure out how to look like Gilles Bensimon - or a famous stylist - who travels with a Birkin bag and minimal accoutrement and somehow looks cool.

Are you going to give a speech?' she asked gaily. He gave a choked laugh. 'Of course not,' he said. 'Not for ages.' 'My cousin Davey gave one on his very first day!' ... 'In the Lords, I remember. It was about how he didn't like strawberry jam.' 'Be nice, Charles! It was a speech about fruit importation, which I admit devolved into something of a tirade.' She couldn't help but laugh. 'Still, you could talk about something more important.' 'Than jam? Impossible. We mustn't set the bar too high, Jane.

People tend to wear a suit without a tie but it's a strange look, there's something missing. Either you wear a blazer and slacks, or you wear a suit and tie. It is challenging today to dress in an appropriate way.

I don't think taste is about money. As your career develops, you're able to decide what to spend your money on. I live in a really small apartment in London, and that's a choice. I live at The Carlyle in New York, but it's not big. It's about making choices of style over flashiness. People's style is subjective and mine happens to be around the classical because I feel comfortable with that, and because of my background. I'm probably living in the wrong time. I should have lived in the Thirties or the Fifties.

When you became a student at Oxford you realized both your own mortality, in the flow of this near-millennium of students, and also the small particle of immortality that attaches to you when you begin to belong to an immortal place.

It had been a perfect nap - the sort a man runs into now and again by chance.