History Is A Set Of Skills Rather

[margaret Thatcher] Was Pretending That Running A Country Was Like Running A Household, Which She Knew Wasn't True.

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 Generations, It Is Bound To Go.

Like A Historian, I Interpret, Select, Discard, Shape, Simplify. Unlike A Historian, I Make Up People's Thoughts.

When You Are Writing Laws You Are Testing Words To Find Their Utmost Power. Like Spells, They Have To Make Things Happen In The Real World, And Like Spells, They Only Work If People Believe In Them.

Fiction Isn't Made By Scraping The Bones Of Topicality For The Last Shreds And Sinews, To Be Processed Into Mechanically Recovered Prose. Like Journalism, It Deals In Ideas As Well As Facts, But Also In Metaphors, Symbols And Myths.