I'll have mine [The Book-Lovers' Anthology] till the day I die - and die happy in the knowledge that I'm leaving it behind for someone else to love. I shall sprinkle pale pencil marks through it pointing out the best passages to some book-lover yet unborn.

I find the treatment of royalty distinctly peculiar. The royal family lives in palaces heavily screened from prying eyes by fences, grounds, gates, guards, all designed to ensure the family absolute privacy. And every newspaper in London carried headlines announcing PRINCESS ANNE HAS OVARIAN CYST REMOVED. I mean you're a young girl reared in heavily guarded seclusion and every beer drinker in every pub knows the precise state of your ovaries.

I never overcame my conviction that writing for commercial television was a kind of prostitution.

And for at least that moment, I wouldn't have traded the hundreds of books I've read for the few I know almost by heart.

It's against my principles to buy a book I haven't read, it's like buying a dress you haven't tried on.

History, as they say, is alive and well and living in London.

I personally can't think of anything less sacrosanct than a bad book or even a mediocre book.