The irony about Charles II is not that he came to the throne because England needed a successor to Charles I, but because England needed a successor to Oliver Cromwell.

Almost everywhere else in Europe, the more military the state, the stronger the king - except in Britain. Here it was parliament, not the monarchy, who signed the cheques. The longer the war went on, the stronger parliament became, as the purse on which it sat grew bigger and bigger.

DIY, cricket, automobile repair. I could study it for a lifetime and not produce a word on the carburettor.

I first read War And Peace about 100 years after Tolstoy wrote it.

There are some places where history just grabs you by the jugular. This is one of them.

The way history is currently taught in schools, jumping from Hitler to the Henrys, is like a nightmare vision of Star Wars, where you have episode four before you have episode one. The sense of going on a journey, of chronology and continuity, is incredibly important to the imagination.

What can art really do in the face of atrocity?