The concentration in my book on Marie Antoinette's childhood and on her family influences. It is surprising how some books actually start with her arrival in France!

I think there has been a great deal of valuable revisionism in women's history.

The clue to book jacket photography is to look friendly and approachable, but not too glamorous.

Lives in previous centuries for women are largely a matter of class. It would have been fun to have been a rich, privileged woman in the 18th century, but no fun at all to be her maid.

I am re-reading Henry James as a change from history. I began with Daisy Miller, and I've just finished Washington Square. What a brilliant, painful book.

My advantage as a woman and a human being has been in having a mother who believed strongly in women's education. She was an early undergraduate at Oxford, and her own mother was a doctor.

I can't read historical fiction because I find the real thing so much more interesting.

That is my major concern: writers who are in prison for writing.

Normally I make myself swim, do exercises. For zest I like going to the cinema.

I decided as usual that justice lay in the middle - that is to say nowhere.

I love hearing details of writers' craft, as cannibals eat the brains of clever men to get cleverer.

Expect stupid. It's everywhere.

Life without risk is a life that is benign and sterile.

I'm a lad of the '60s. I started a magazine to try and end the Vietnam war, but it was a number of years before I had the profile, the financial resources and the time to do more.

Appearances are often deceiving.

That's why I love spiders. 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again.

In order that one industry might grow or come into existence, a hundred other industries would have to shrink.

The majority of casino players leave too much to chance when playing in a casino. To put it bluntly, they don't have a clue as to how to play.

The inability to listen and to depict in the countenance what others have said has spoiled many a good actress.

The time had just come when I had been pushed as far as I could stand to be pushed.

I think the dangers of the impact of GMOs on the environment are undebatable. Genetically modified crops are tied to the chemicals sprayed on them.