You have no idea how humiliating it was, as a boy, to suddenly have all your clothes, your toys, snatched by the bailiff. I mean we were a middle-class family, it's not as if it was happening up and down the street. It made me ashamed, I felt dirty.

As our Governments spin, lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and looks the other way.

There will be no war, but in the pursuit of principle no stone will be left standing.

Let's die of it before we're too old.

I have a theory which I suspect is rather immoral,' Smiley went on, more lightly. 'Each of us has only a quantum of compassion. That if we lavish our concern on every stray cat, we never get to the centre of things.

The things that are done in the name of the shareholder are, to me, as terrifying as the things that are done - dare I say it - in the name of God.

I used to think it was clever to confuse comedy with tragedy. Now I wish I could distinguish them.