I wrote my earliest piece for The Sunday Times about being a young wife.

Without doubt, keep a diary. From the day you're born, keep a diary, because we all forget things so quickly.

Always be nice to everyone in the firm on the way up. You never know who you may meet on the way down.

People always assume that bachelors are single by choice and spinsters because nobody asked them. It never enters their heads that poor bachelors might have worn the knees of their trousers out proposing to girls who rejected them or that a girl might deliberately stay unmarried.

If you feel compelled to give a New Year's Eve party, don't invite people to arrive too early or they'll go off the boil before midnight.

Bachelors begin at thirty-six. Up till this age they are regarded as single men.

it's a good idea to wait a few months before joining anything when you arrive at a village. A bookseller friend who retired to nearby Oxfordshire, and was worried he might be bored, got himself on to every village committee in the first six months, and spent the next ten years extricating himself.