If the monarchy were removed tomorrow, it wouldn't have a huge effect on the national mind-set. The monarchy is mildly interesting and largely harmless. I can't find I can get very heated about it. In the next couple of generations, it is bound to go. There is so much else in the world that is more interesting.

He is careful to deny responsibility for September, but he does not, you notice, condemn the killings. He also refrains from killing words, sparing Roland and Buzot, as if they were beneath his notice. August 10 was illegal, he says; so too was the taking of the Bastille. What account can we take of that, in revolution? It is the nature of revolutions to break laws. We are not justices of the peace; we are legislators to a new world.

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

[Margaret] Thatcher could fake her class background, but she couldn't fake the quality of her mind.

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

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

She is very plain. What does Henry see in her?'" "He thinks she's stupid. He finds it restful.