It's a principle of mine to come into the story as late as possible, and to tell it as fast as you can.

I've always had difficulties with female characters.

How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre.

Without a pen in my hand I can't think.

I was the British spy who had come out of the woodwork and told it how it really was, and anything I said to the contrary only enforced the myth. And since I was writing for a public hooked on Bond and desperate for the antidote, the myth stuck.

The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the other cat’s mat is a story.

I can't think of anybody worse to live with.