People try much less hard to make a marriage work than they used to fifty years ago. Divorce is easier.

That image of the countryside being a threatening place still exists. People continue to resist the challenge of learning about aspects of life they don't understand.

I don't write for any particular kind of person.

A lot of people stop short. They don't actually die but they say, 'Right I'm old, and I'm going to retire,' and then they dwindle into nothing. They go off to Florida and become jolly boring.

In my eighties, my best friends are in their fifties, and I have many friends at university. It keeps one young, and up with the vocabulary. That's terribly important, especially for a writer.

I found out only recently that we were making an index of enemy code signs.

I remember the evacuee children from towns and cities throwing stones at the farm animals. When we explained that if you did that you wouldnt have any milk, meat or eggs, they soon learned to respect the animals.