"I fell into conversation with Douglas. His is a split personality. À deux he is delightful; clever, funny, observant, drily cynical. But get him anywhere near "display mode", particularly if there are officials around, and he might as well have a corncob up his arse. Pompous, trite, high-sounding, cautiously guarded."

“Pinkish toffs like Ian and Charlie , having suffered, for ten years, submission to their social inferior see in Michael an arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but one who at any rate seeks the cachet. While all the nouves in the party think he is the real thing.”

“The only solution for dealing with the IRA is to kill 600 people in one night.”

“So what does it matter where it was when it was hit? We could have sunk it if it'd been tied up on the quayside in a neutral port and everyone would still have been delighted.”

“I am not a fascist. Fascists are shopkeepers, I am a Nazi.”

“You cannot come here because you are not white.”

“'The trouble with Michael is that he had to buy all his furniture.' Snobby, but cutting.”