People who can write a book usually do.

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

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.

Although it is the biggest time-waster in office life, you must never underrate the importance of the memo. You will be judged by the volume of your paper work.

Youve simply got to go on and on with your family and friends and tell them how much you love them because you never know whether theyll be there tomorrow, do you?

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.

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