I'm not wild about holidays. They always seem a ludicrously expensive way of proving there's no place like home.

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.

There is something infinitely dingy about the word workshop. Pray that England doesn't become a nation of workshopkeepers.

The only thing a whirlwind courtship does is blow dust in everyone's eyes.

I can assure you that the class system is alive and well and living in people's minds in England.

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

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