Busyness, I feel increasingly, is the writer's curse and downfall. You read too much and write too readily, you become cut off from your inner life, from the flow of your own thoughts, and turned far too much towards the outside world.

I can't think of any male politician who magnetizes love and hate - mainly hate - the way [Margaret Thatcher] did.

I am very happy in second-hand bookshops; would a gardener not be happy in a garden?

In my 20s I was in constant pain from undiagnosed endometriosis. With no prospect of a cure, I decided I needed a career - writing - that could accommodate being ill.

As a writer, you owe it to yourself not to get stuck in a rut of looking at the world in a certain way.

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

Hindsight is the historian's necessary vice.