Suppose within each book there is another book, and within every letter on every page another volume constantly unfolding; but these volumes take no ….

When I began to read as an adult, my first big enthusiasm was Evelyn Waugh. I read almost exclusively novelists of a generation back. I did the Russi….

I think I would have been a reasonably good lawyer. I have a faculty for making sense of mountains of information..

Truth can break the gates down, truth can howl in the street; unless truth is pleasing, personable and easy to like, she is condemned to stay whimper….

No ruler in the history of the world has ever been able to afford a war. They're not affordable things. No prince ever says, 'This is my budget, so t….

Much historical fiction that centers on real people has always been deficient in information, lacking in craft and empty in affect..

It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires..

You mustn't stand about. Come home with me to dinner.’ ‘No.’ More shakes his head. ‘I would rather be blown around on the river and go home hungry. I….

For what's the point of breeding children, if each generation does not improve on what went before..

I think the monarchy today is. . . mildly interesting and largely harmless. I can't find I can get very heated about it. In the next couple of genera….

It is all very well planning what you will do in six months, what you will do in a year, but it’s no good at all if you don’t have a plan for tomorro….

When you have committed enough words to paper, you feel you have a spine stiff enough to stand up in the wind. But when you stop writing, you find th….

There is so much else in the world that is more interesting [ than monarchy]..

I will get into trouble, I am sure, because since my Kate Middleton speech and before, certain papers were after me. I am not saying, however, that i….

What [Margaret Thatcher] made a play for was the acquisitive: our greedy nature. She set aside other things like an identification with community, al….

My first book was a historical novel. I started writing in 1974. In those days, historical novels meant ladies with swelling bosoms on the cover. Bas….

We have a number of very powerful women in the world now - Mrs. [Angela] Merkel, who the Germans call Mutti. What did we call Mrs. [Margaret] Thatche….

I've got so many ideas, and sometimes the more exhausted my body gets, the more active my mind gets..

Insights don't usually arrive at my desk, but go into notebooks when I'm on the move. Or half-asleep..

In order to successfully impersonate men, the woman [Margaret Thatcher] launched a war..

History offers us vicarious experience. It allows the youngest student to possess the ground equally with his elders; without a knowledge of history ….