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

I am not a historian. I don't see what I do as being a rival to biography.

Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

The writer I adore is Ivy Compton-Burnett.I couldn't get more than a few pages in when I first read her. In many ways, she is very clumsy and her plots are rubbish. But we don't read her for that. There are pages and pages of dialogue. What it requires is real effort and attention.

Imagination only comes when you privilege the subconscious, when you make delay and procrastination work for you.

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

I spend a lot of my time talking to the dead, but since I get paid for it, no one thinks I'm mad.