Never drink black coffee at lunch; it will keep you awake all afternoon.

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.

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

Go to lots of interviews, at least one a month even when you don't need a job, to keep in training for when you do.

Meetings ... are rather like cocktail parties. You don't want to go, but you're cross not to be asked.

The letter of application ... should be a masterpiece of fiction, papering over all the cracks. Get it properly typed on decent writing paper. Never let it run over the page, people get bored with reading.

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.