All my life I've been aware of the Second World War humming in the background. I was born 10 years after it was finished, and without ever seeing it.….

Television in the 1960s & 70s had just as much dross and the programmes were a lot more tediously patronising than they are now. Memory truncates occ….

I don't know how long a child will remain utterly static in front of the television, but my guess is that it could be well into their thirties..

A country scratching a lazy irritation at sagging doorjambs and late trains, whose greatest attribute is a collective, smelly tolerance, where a chap….

You either get the point of Africa or you don't. What draws me back year after year is that it's like seeing the world with the lid off..

Once upon a time, a historian told me that the most important choice a new historian could make was of his or her specialist subject. Most of the goo….

Sport is how poor kids from poor countries pass through the eye of the needle to riches and recognition..

Beautifully shot, impeccably paced, it was a clear, unrelenting look at the National Trust, its friends and enemies, and it makes you want to burn yo….

I walk up a dune to a beach and look out to sea, but it's 100km away. The ships lie askew in their dry beds, at anchor for ever. Today is my son's bi….

Get up now and go and find Robert Kilroy-Silk. Smile in a warm, friendly sort of way, then punch him on the nose. Now go and find Robert on televisio….

We like to see death as an unfair conspiracy, and what we want is a magic practitioner, a combination of Dr Watson and Sherlock Holmes..

Nobody ever forgets their first night in the bush. It's among the precious, meagre handful of life firsts that remain indelible..

The reason that chefs become chefs is that they're not allowed into rooms with windows..

Science fiction is never about the future, in the same way history is rarely about the past: they're both parable formats for examining or commenting….

Like most parents, I've been stumped by homework, the big questions, such as: 'What is the point of geography - the pilot always knows where we are g….

A lobster bisque ought to be the crowning glory of the potager. And this one was excellent. Silky as a gigolo's compliment and fishy as a chancellor'….

The interesting adults are always the school failures, the weird ones, the losers, the malcontents, this isn’t wishful thinking. It’s the rule..

Making a programme that appears to condone a positive stereotype actually enforces all the negative ones as well. It says that they all have a valid ….

Facts are what pedantic, dull people have instead of opinions..

The usual sniggering examples of animal behaviour were brought in to explain cheating. Funny how the behaviour of shrews and gibbons is never used to….

The truth and the facts aren't necessarily the same thing. Telling the truth is the object of all art; facts are what the unimaginative have instead ….