Great art has dreadful manners. The greatest paintings grab you in a headlock, rough up your composure, and then proceed in short order to re-arrange your reality.

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.

Nations don't start out. There is not a particular moment when they unveil the essence of themselves. They are always a work in progress.

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

In America, much foreign policy seems contrived to be an exercise in political theory with no attention to history whatsoever. Yet there's a great reverence for history - though it's history as thumb-sucking, security blanket-nibbling self-congratulation.

Charles was constitutionally incapable of being a constitutional monarch.

I felt New York was a big, more stylish, more metropolitan Golders Green. I was thrilled.