One of the virtues of the NHS... it doesn't worry you about money at the moment when you're least capable of doing anything about it.

Little books are the things to write at my age, I've decided. Avoid the big ones, go for the little ones.

In between the Queen and the First Lady, Nancy Reagan, sat Tony Richardson, looking very calm. Later on it emerged that this was because, having not been apprised of the placement until he was about to sit down, he had died of fright. To have expired was to be fortunate.

I work on the assumption, or let it be the fear, that the reader will stop reading if I stop being interesting.

Murray sounds like a blindfolded man riding a unicycle on the rim of the pit of doom, the men actually facing the danger are all so taciturn that you might as well try interviewing the cars themselves.

Here was my first lesson on the resolutely maintained untidiness and ill-health of the English upper orders. In baggy evening dress and old before their time, they displayed gapped and tangled teeth in loosely open mouths. Gently shedding dandruff, they lurched across the lawn. When they stood at the bar they looked like Lee Trevino Putting.

A luxury liner is really just a bad play surrounded by water.