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.

Irreverence is the lifeblood of freedom.

Historians are left forever chasing shadows, painfully aware of their inability ever to reconstruct a dead world in its completeness however thorough or revealing their documentation. We are doomed to be forever hailing someone who has just gone around the corner and out of earshot.

In its Greek origins, historia meant inquiry, and from Thucydides onwards, the past has been studied to understand its connections with the present.

I'm helplessly and permanently a Red Sox fan. It was like first love...You never forget. It's special. It's the first time I saw a ballpark. I'd thought nothing would ever replace cricket. Wow! Fenway Park at 7 o'clock in the evening. Oh, just, magic beyond magic: never got over that

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

The next worse thing to a battle lost is a battle won.