Writing is like walking in a deserted street. Out of the dust in the street you make a mud pie.

The Secret Intelligence Service I knew occupied dusky suites of little rooms opposite St James's Park Tube station in London.

Why did I desert Labour? Total bloody disillusionment. The party was a corpse. It had no ideology, it became detached, old, spineless and needed to go.

A committee is an animal with four back legs.

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

The trouble is, when professional spies go out of their way to make a definitive statement about one of their own, the public tends to believe the opposite: which puts us all back where we started.

Wives?" she asked, interrupting him. For a moment, he had assumed she was tuning to the novel. Then he saw her waiting, suspicious eyes, so he replied cautiously, "None active," as if wives were volcanoes.