When I am fishing, I think quite a lot about the fish, but I also think about the book I'm writing.

I'm a wet liberal really, and always have been. But I'm sort of an aggressive wet liberal.

I would have been a disastrous soldier.

As George Orwell wisely observed a generation later, the only way swiftly to end a war is to lose it.

If you can't get a job as a pianist in a brothel, you become a royal reporter.

The only redemptive feature of war is the brotherhood which it forges.

A Tory government with a decent mandate seems the only hope of tackling the fiscal catastrophe responsibly.