I grew up in a completely bookless household. It was my father's boast that he had never read a book from end to end.

In the last 15 or 20 years, I've watched the British press simply go to hell. There seems to be no limit, no depths to which the tabloids won't sink. I don't know who these people are but they're little pigs.

When a problem threatens to engulf you, there's nothing like irrelevant detail to keep your head above water.

But I think the real tension lies in the relationship between what you might call the pursuer and his quarry, whether it's the writer or the spy.

Smiley was soaked to the skin and God as a punishment had removed all taxis from the face of London.

Life was to be a search, or nothing! But it was the fear that it was nothing that drove me forward. Every encounter was an encounter with myself.

I had two experiences of criminality: one was my conman father, the other was teaching at Eton