The memo's chief function ... is as a track-coverer, so that you can turn on someone six months later and snarl: 'Well, you should have known about it, I sent you a memo.

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.

The memo's chief function ... is as a track-coverer, so that you can turn on someone six months later and snarl: 'Well, you should have known about it, I sent you a memo.

I think we ought to have a kindness year, or a kindness century.

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

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.

Leo, sadly, has Parkinsons, but he used to cook all sorts of dazzling things.