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.

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

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

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

A lot of meetings are held to arrange when to have meetings. ... Meetings today are usually called conferences to make them sound more significant.

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 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.