Hindsight is the historian's necessary vice.

My concern is less the monarchy as such than the attempt of a fading colonial power to hang onto grandeur.

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

One of the ideals [Margaret Thatcher] grew up with was self-denial and postponement of gratification, and yet she went about to create a greedy, short-term society. It is a paradox.

My first career ambitions involved turning into a boy; I intended to be either a railway guard or a knight errant.

When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them.

Fiction leaves us so much work to do, allows the individual so much input; you have to see, you have to hear, you have to taste the madeleine, and while you are seemingly passive in your chair, you have to travel.