I don't write huge books any more. I used to write 1,000 printed pages, but now I write short books. I did one on Napoleon, 50,000 words - enjoyed doing that. He was a baddie. I did one on Churchill, which was a bestseller in New York, I'm glad to say. 50,000 words. He was a goodie.

The writer learns to write, in the last resort, only by writing. He must get words onto paper even if he is dissatisfied with them.

Hell is being trapped in a night-club with the'beautiful people'and forced to live in a'luxury penthouse flat'.

I very much wanted to be editor of the 'New Statesman!' But I never wanted to be prime minister, except maybe as a little boy.

Marxism, Freudianism, global warming. These are proof - of which history offers so many examples - that people can be suckers on a grand scale. To their fanatical followers they are a substitute for religion. Global warming, in particular, is a creed, a faith, a dogma that has little to do with science.

You know you're an Arizona native when you have to look up "mass transit" in the dictionary.

The most socially subversive institution of our time is the one-parent family.