'Show up at the desk' is one of the first rules of writing, but for 'Wolf Hall' I was about 30 years late.

When you become published and become a reviewer, piles of books come along and you are pushed by fashion and what you are commissioned to do.

I would have been a disaster as a career politician. I would never have toed a party line.

In order to successfully impersonate men, the woman [Margaret Thatcher] launched a war.

It was unfortunate for other women who might come after [Margaret Thatcher] that the first woman to become prime minister was a male impersonator.

He thinks, I remembered you, Thomas More, but you didn't remember me. You never even saw me coming.

We have a number of very powerful women in the world now - Mrs. [Angela] Merkel, who the Germans call Mutti. What did we call Mrs. [Margaret] Thatcher? When she was minister of education, she stopped the children's free school milk. This may sound quaint, but after the war we were such a malnourished nation that part of the founding of the welfare state were public health initiatives. Every little schoolchild got milk. Mrs. Thatcher stopped it. They called her "Maggie Thatcher, milk snatcher."