[Margaret Thatcher] scorned and despised other women, and predicated her values entirely on the values of her father, a small town shopkeeper.

The word 'however' is like an imp coiled beneath your chair. It induces ink to form words you have not yet seen, and lines to march across the page and overshoot the margin. There are no endings. If you think so you are deceived as to their nature. They are all beginnings. Here is one.

[Margaret Thatcher] aroused such strong loathing in so many people. That's the fact that interests me.

[Margaret Thatcher] was always talking about what the prudent housewife should do and what the prudent housewife knew.

When you have committed enough words to paper, you feel you have a spine stiff enough to stand up in the wind. But when you stop writing, you find that's all you are - a spine, a row of rattling vertebrae, dried out like an old quill pen.

I dislike pastiche; it attracts attention to the language only.

Like a historian, I interpret, select, discard, shape, simplify. Unlike a historian, I make up people's thoughts.