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

The aristocrat, when he wants to, has very good manners. The Scottish upper classes, in particular, have that shell-shocked look that probably comes from banging their heads on low beams leaping to their feet whenever a woman comes into the room. Aristocrats are also deeply male chauvinist, and ... on the whole they tend to be reactionary.

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

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

I love the long grass coming up to meet the willows.

People who can write a book usually do.

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.