The older I get, the more I want to do. It beats death, decay or golf in unfortunate trousers. Peace and quiet depress me.

Irreverence is the lifeblood of freedom.

Charlie Hebdo: Satire was the father of true political freedom, born in the 18th century; the scourge of bigots and tyrants. Sing its praises.

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

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

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.

At 11, 12 I thought I was clumsy, ugly, a mess, an unappealing person, but I did have the gift of the gab. I had the school record at Haberdashers for consecutive detentions for simply speaking out of turn.