[T]he heart is like any other organ, you can weigh it on a scale.

You mustn't stand about. Come home with me to dinner.’ ‘No.’ More shakes his head. ‘I would rather be blown around on the river and go home hungry. If I could trust you only to put food in my mouth – but you will put words into it.

If you are without impulses, you are, to a degree, without joy..." 469

It follows that if you are not a mother you are not a grandmother. Your life has become unpunctuated, whereas the lives of other women around you have these distinct phases.

One of the frustrations of someone like Thomas Cromwell is that, before they step into the light of history, and become extremely well documented, they are not known. A king might be well documented but not everyone.

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

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