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

No ruler in the history of the world has ever been able to afford a war. They're not affordable things. No prince ever says, 'This is my budget, so this is the kind of war I can have.

I think psychologically [Margaret Thatcher] is really worth studying. I am reading Charles Moore's biography of her, and he has gotten us right there with a woman who lived the unexamined life, and lived it deliberately, and who has contempt for history, even her own.

I am sure that all politicians seek the home connection with the voter. But [Margaret Thatcher] carried it to extremes.

I'm one of these children who grew up at the knee of my grandmother and her elder sister, listening to very old people talk about their memories.

In terms of essays, I would say Oliver Sacks. His breadth of hard knowledge and imagination and empathy seems to constitute the perfect mind to me.

At New Year's he had given Anne a present of silver forks with handles of rock crystal. He hopes she will use them to eat with, not to stick in people.