People who get on at school are the ones who play by the rules, and no one's going to get far in later life playing by the system..

The only redemptive feature of war is the brotherhood which it forges..

We're taking part in a divine comedy and we should realise that the play is always a comedy, in that we're all ultimately ridiculous..

If you can't get a job as a pianist in a brothel, you become a royal reporter..

I'm a wet liberal really, and always have been. But I'm sort of an aggressive wet liberal..

You cannot write down how people are good; you just know it, and cannot get away from it..

I've always found women more loyal, more disciplined, less neurotic, more hardworking. I just think they're perfect colleagues. Whereas, God knows, I….

There was no doubt that in the early and mid-eighties that many of us in broadsheet newspapers felt that we still had a responsibility to try to prot….

Lots of us when we're children believe 'oh well, if the world knew us as we really are, they'd know what wonderful, clever, brilliant, charming peopl….

It's miraculous how much easier the computer has made my sort of work..

A Tory government with a decent mandate seems the only hope of tackling the fiscal catastrophe responsibly..

As George Orwell wisely observed a generation later, the only way swiftly to end a war is to lose it..

When I am fishing, I think quite a lot about the fish, but I also think about the book I'm writing..

I would have been a disastrous soldier..