Occupation: Writer Birth: October 27, 1950
Fear of death has never played a large part in my consciousness - perhaps unimaginative of me..
Everyone writes in Tolstoy's shadow, whether one feels oneself to be Tolstoyan or not..
It is eerie being all but alone in Westminster Abbey. Without the tourists, there are only the dead, many of them kings and queens. They speak powerf….
When Christians start thinking about Jesus, things start breaking down, they lose their faith. It's perfectly possible to go to church every Sunday a….
This book has been a catalogue of mistakes by politicians, moral and practical disasters which led to wars, enslavement and wretchedness on a scale w….
My belief has come about in large measure because of the lives and examples of people I have known - not the famous, not saints, but friends and rela….
Anti-Semitism is extremely common..
In the 18th century, James Hargreaves invented the Spinning Jenny, and Richard Arkwright pioneered the water-propelled spinning frame which led to th….
If you imagine writing 1,000 words a day, which most journalists do, that would be a very long book a year..
In universities and intellectual circles, academics can guarantee themselves popularity - or, which is just as satisfying, unpopularity - by being op….
I am shy to admit that I have followed the advice given all those years ago by a wise archbishop to a bewildered young man: that moments of unbelief ….
The Royal Family are not like you and me. They live in houses so big that you can walk round all day and never need to meet your spouse. The Queen an….
We cannot hope for a society in which formal organized religion dies out. But we can stop behaving as if it was worthy of our collective respect..
I'm like Jane Austen - I work on the corner of the dining table..
I think that if you can't be loyal to the Church, it's best to get out..
I believe the collapse of the House of Windsor is tied in with the collapse of the Church of England..
Since Einstein developed his theory of relativity, and Rutherford and Bohr revolutionised physics, our picture of the world has radically changed..
Nearly all monster stories depend for their success on Jack killing the Giant, Beowulf or St. George slaying the Dragon, Harry Potter triumphing over….
If you read about Mussolini or Stalin or some of these other great monsters of history, they were at it all the time, that they were getting up in th….
We, while noting many things amiss about Victorian society, more often sense them judging us..
I suppose if I'd got a brilliant first and done research I might still be a don today, but I hope not. People become dons because they are incapable ….