Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.

[Margaret Thatcher] was pretending that running a country was like running a household, which she knew wasn't true.

When you become published and become a reviewer, piles of books come along and you are pushed by fashion and what you are commissioned to do.

[Margaret Thatcher] was always talking about what the prudent housewife should do and what the prudent housewife knew.

Wolf Hall attempts to duplicate not the historian's chronology but the way memory works: in leaps, loops, flashes.

To my astonishment, when Wolf Hall came out, people asked if I made it up - [Thomas More] burning of heretics. It was well documented. And he was proud of it! The Brits love lost causes.

People will identify with a persecuted minority without asking themselves what they are identifying with.