Some Of These Things Are True And

Though I Have Never Thought Of Myself As A Book Collector, There Are Shelves In Our House Browsed So Often, On So Many Rainy Winter Nights, That The Contents Have Seeped Into Me As If By Osmosis.

[h]ope Takes You By The Throat Like A Stranger, It Makes Your Heart Leap.

For Historians, Creative Writers Provide A Kind Of Pornography.

I Believe This Was [margaret Thatcher] Estimate Of The Voter: "these People Are So Stupid That They Will Vote For Me Because They Think I Know How To Run The Household."

For Me, It Is About Using Everything That Is There And Using The Gaps In The Record, Figuring Out Why The Gaps Might Be There. And Then When You Move On To The Level Of What Historians Said, Laying The Interpretations Side By Side. You Also Have To Look Back At The Documents And Make Your Own Judgments. What The Record Says And What People Say About It. A Novelist Can Fill The Gaps In A Way That A Biographer Cannot.