London has fine museums, the British Library is one of the greatest library institutions in the world... It's got everything you want, really.

London has fine museums, the British Library is one of the greatest library institutions in the world... It's got everything you want, really.

I'm swanning round the world looking at the most fabulously interesting things. Such good fortune.

I just wish the world was twice as big and half of it was still unexplored.

They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator.

The climate, the economic situation, rising birth rates; none of these things give me a lot of hope or reason to be optimistic.

One in eight plant species face extinction.