Ideologies have no heart of their own. They're the whores and angels of our striving selves.

What else has a journalist to do these days, after all, but report life's miseries?

It's part of a writer's profession, as it's part of a spy's profession, to prey on the community to which he's attached, to take away information - often in secret - and to translate that into intelligence for his masters, whether it's his readership or his spy masters. And I think that both professions are perhaps rather lonely.

I worked for MI6 in the Sixties, during the great witch-hunts, when the shared paranoia of the Cold War gripped the services.

When you're my age and you see a story, you better go for it pretty quickly. I'd just like to get a few more novels under my belt.

I taught principally German language and literature at Eton. But any master with private pupils must be prepared to teach anything they ask for. That can be as diverse as the early paintings of Salvador Dali or how bumblebees manage to fly.

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