There are so many characters whizzing around inside my head, it's like Looney Tunes. But as soon as I've finished writing about them, I completely forget who they are.

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.

As a Londoner I was able to see how the world of power and money cast its shadow on those who failed.

Under the force of the imagination, nature itself is changed.

Familial love can find an echo in our own hearts just as it did in that of Charles Dickens.

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

There are two types of people, you see. One type keep their heads straight, and look around as they walk. The others look up - at the tops of houses, at the eaves and the lintels and the roofs, which can tell you when they were built - and I've always done that.