Like its politicians and its wars, society has the teenagers it deserves.

I'm in the business of providing people with secondary satisfactions. It wouldn't have done me much good if they had all written their own plays, would it?

What a grand, higgledy-piggledy, sensible old place Norwich is!

Much of writing might be described as mental pregnancy with successive difficult deliveries.

To show a child what once delighted you, to find the child's delight added to your own - this is happiness.

Our trouble is that we drink too much tea. I see in this the slow revenge of the Orient, which has diverted the Yellow River down our throats.

But some of us are beginning to pull well away, in our irritation, from...the exquisite tasters, the vintage snobs, the three-star Michelin gourmets. There is, we feel, a decent area somewhere between boiled carrots and Beluga caviare, sour plonk and Chateau Lafitte, where we can take care of our gullets and bellies without worshipping them.