You don't have to be brought up in a grand house to have a sense of the past, and I truly believe that there are certain people to whom or through whom the territory - the place, the past - speaks.

I strike up conversations all the time and it is very interesting, finding out about things I know nothing about.

I think biography can be more personal than fiction, and certainly can be more expressive.

It may seem unfashionable to say so, but historians should seize the imagination as well as the intellect. History is, in a sense, a story, a narrative of adventure and of vision, of character and of incident. It is also a portrait of the great general drama of the human spirit.

There are certain people who seem doomed to buy certain houses. The house expects them. It waits for them.

I never read in bed, only in my study.

I wanted to be a poet when I was 20; I had no interest in fiction or biography and precious little interest in history, but those three elements in my life have become the most important.