When someone annoys you, imagine them as a baby – their parents’ dream with all their futures to come – and wonder what went wrong.
— Joan Bakewell
“Avoid anything that pretends to be what it’s not”. From low fat ‘buttery’ spreads to decorative ‘pocket flaps’ on clothes to ‘bacon-flavour’ sprinkles, they are all at best disappointing, at worse downright deceitful.
— Xanthe Clay
Never cook in suede shoes.
— Stephen Bayley
Abraham Lincoln said: “If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six sharpening my axe”. No wonder he’s the only US President with a statue in Parliament Square. It took me years to understand the value of this but I genuinely try to abide by it.
— James Cracknell
“Always walk towards the sound of gunfire.” The late Barbara Castle told me this when I introduced her at a literary dinner along with Jeffrey Archer. I’m pleased to say that as an orator, she wiped the floor with Archer and this exhortation, which means if you think there’s something wrong, there almost always is, is one I turn to pretty much every day.
— John Mitchison
If you don’t know what to do, do nothing.
— Susan Hill
“When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.”
— Richard Dunwoody
Make sure you have four good friends: one more handsome, one uglier, one richer and one poorer than yourself. That way you experience perfect contentment and humility.
— Nicholas Coleridge
Nigel Nicolson, MP in the Fifties, said of public speaking: “Always know exactly what you are going to say. Never know how you are going to say it.”
All the best advice I received was from my father, and I even took some of it. My favourite is: “The man who never made a mistake never made anything.”
— Peter Barron