“She believed that, in an ideal world, the working class would rule the country, but she had no particular desire to ask any of them to tea.”

“The only rule I have found to have any validity is writing is not to bore yourself.”

“In the middle of the swinging sixties people in England were apparently under some sort of obligation to have a good time and most of them didn't. A Russian and an American walked about in space to no one's particular advantage. The Beatles received their British Empire medals and, so it was said, smoked cannabis in the lavatories at Buckingham Palace. American aeroplanes were bombing Vietnam, but no one seemed to talk about the nuclear holocaust any more.”

“She who must be obeyed," by Horace Rumpole character”

“You can't change people. You know that. You can't make them stop hating each other, or longing to blow up the world, not by walking through the rain and singing to a small guitar. Most you can do for them is pull them out of the womb, thump them on the backside and let them get on with it.”

“The people look forbidding, solemn, marked by that impossible ideal, Communism, which, like Christianity, seemed to demand too much of humanity and, falling into the wrong hands, led too easily to horrible brutality.”

“She felt a tightness in her chest and sent for Dr Simcox.'What's the trouble?''Look out there, that's the trouble! It's so green and quiet and it's always bloody raining.''That's England, Mrs Mallard-Greene. I'm afraid there's no known cure for it.”