I don't know whether it's age or maturity, but I certainly find myself committed more and more to the looser forms of Western democracy at any price.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was the work of a wayward imagination brought to the end of its tether by political disgust and personal confusion. Fifty years on, I don't associate the book with anything that ever happened to me, save for one wordless encounter at London airport when a worn-out, middle-aged military kind of man in a stained raincoat slammed a handful of mixed foreign change on to the bar and in gritty Irish accents ordered himself as much Scotch as it would buy. In that moment, Alec Leamas was born. Or so my memory, not always a reliable informant, tells me.

There is a terrible alienation in the ordinary man between what he is being told and what he secretly believes.

If there is one eternal truth of politics, it is that there are always a dozen good reasons for doing nothing.

But there is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state.

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

I've always had difficulties with female characters.