Those of us who had a perfectly happy childhood should be able to sue for deprivation of literary royalties.

Anyone who supposed that when Margaret Thatcher left Number Ten she was going to take a Trappist vow did not know that formidable politician.

There is a sort of exotic preposterousness about a lot of elections, the way arguments are made even cruder.

It behaves more like a tribe than a democratic institution...responding to custom rather than reason and using its own liturgy and language for the conduct of its domestic affairs.

We have our own system, ... and journalists in our system are not put in prison for embarrassing the government by revealing things the government might not wish to have revealed. The important thing is that our system, under which journalists can write without fear or favor, should continue.

Green politics at its worst amounts to a sort of Zen fascism; less extreme, it denounces growth and seeks to stop the world so that we can all get off.

I suppose I've always carried what is regarded as a bit of unnecessary baggage in Britain. I've always carried the charge that I am an intellectual in politics.