Ten Downing Street is a house, not an office. That is its most important characteristic.

Diplomacy is unfashionable in the world of knee-jerk reaction and the dogmatic sound bite on television.

There are thus great swathes of the past where understanding is more important and reputable than judgement, because the principal actors performed in line with the ideas and values of that time, not of ours.

We should be wary of politicians who profess to follow history while only noticing those signposts of history that point in the direction which they themselves already favour.

Ten Downing Street is a house, not an office. That is its most important characteristic.

Some people find it difficult to argue with a woman Prime Minister and shrivel up.

Margaret Thatcher, growing up in a bombed and battered Britain, derived a distrust which has grown with the years not just of Germany but of all continental Europe.