By The Tits Of Holy Agnes

I Loved Gore Vidal's Burr. That Book Gave Me Courage.

Wolf Hall Attempts To Duplicate Not The Historian's Chronology But The Way Memory Works: In Leaps, Loops, Flashes.

A Sea-green Sky: Lamps Blossoming White. This Is Marginal Land: Fields Of Strung Wire, Of Treadless Tyres In Ditches, Fridges Dead On Their Backs, And Starving Ponies Cropping The Mud. It Is A Landscape Running With Outcasts And Escapees, With Afghans, Turks And Kurds: With Scapegoats, Scarred With Bottle And Burn Marks, Limping From The Cities With Broken Ribs. The Life Forms Here Are Rejects, Or Anomalies: The Cats Tipped From Speeding Cars, And The Heathrow Sheep, Their Fleece Clotted With The Stench Of Aviation Fuel.

One Of The Ideals [margaret Thatcher] Grew Up With Was Self-denial And Postponement Of Gratification, And Yet She Went About To Create A Greedy, Short-term Society. It Is A Paradox.

You Don't Get On By Being Original. You Don't Get On By Being Bright. You Don't Get On By Being Strong. You Get On By Being A Subtle Crook.