Insight cannot be taken back. You cannot return to the moment you were in before.

There is so much else in the world that is more interesting [ than monarchy].

I think I would have been a reasonably good lawyer. I have a faculty for making sense of mountains of information.

I think it is going to take another fifty years for the report to be in. If I were to give a preliminary report, I would say that [Margaret Thatcher] wrecked this country.

My first book was a historical novel. I started writing in 1974. In those days, historical novels meant ladies with swelling bosoms on the cover. Basically, it meant historical romance. It was not respectable as a genre.

I think it took me half a page of 'Wolf Hall' to think: 'This is the novel I should have been writing all along.'

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