A broadsheet obituarist once pointed out to me that veteran soldiers die by rank. First to go are the generals, admirals and air marshals, then the b….

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….

My father was a film-maker. He always said he wanted to go like Humphrey Jennings, the legendary director who stepped backwards over a cliff while fr….

There were moments when I wondered at the gossamer veil that stops licence from being libel. I suspect that taking on the job of England manager puts….

He (Jeremy Clarkson) is the last man standing on the beach commanding the glaciers' melt waters to go back.

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

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.….

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 ….

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..

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….

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….

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..

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

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'….

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….

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 ….

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….

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….

I still secretly believe that afternoons are the time for the test card and you shouldn't watch television when the sun is out..

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….

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