I always try to travel light.

The thing I love about Rome is that is has so many layers. In it, you can follow anything that interests you: town planning, architecture, churches or culture. It's a city rich in antiquity and early Christian treasures, and just endlessly fascinating. There's nowhere else like it.

'Philomena' was even better than I had expected. I was so pleased to see the evil Irish nuns thoroughly exposed, and I thought Judi Dench gave a flawless performance, as did everybody else.

'Words and Music' on Radio 3 is always a treat. Actors read passages of poetry and prose interspersed with music, and nobody tells you what it is. Later you can look it up online, but at the time you can't cheat.

Simon Russell Beale is an incomparable speaker of Shakespeare and a superb all-round actor.

I belong to the Richmond Concert Society, who put on very good concerts.

You become more tolerant when you become older. You're not interested in rapping people over the knuckles; you're interested in understanding them.

It's a difficult thing to lose a child, a grown-up child.

When I kept a diary, I realised that it was all moanings and depression, and I think that is quite common.

If I'm in a state about a book, I'll get up at 6 A.M. and write before breakfast, but usually I'll start afterwards and then work a full day with a break for lunch.

I didn't start writing my own books until I was 40.

I was very priggish as a child. I saved up for a book on medieval English nunneries, for which I was despised by my friends.

Dickens is a lover of human beings; a relisher of human beings.

I would perhaps like to go back to writing small books about obscure people.

I've behaved badly in my life. I hope I haven't behaved as badly as Dickens! In a way, if you're a woman, you're not in a position to behave as badly, because you don't have the economic power.

Writers don't make good spouses. When I am writing, I'm not a good wife. I shut myself away, and all my emotions are directed towards what I'm trying to write.

One of my most vivid memories of the mid-1950s is of crying into a washbasin full of soapy grey baby clothes - there were no washing machines - while my handsome and adored husband was off playing football in the park on Sunday morning with all the delightful young men who had been friends to both of us at Cambridge three years earlier.

By the time I went up to Cambridge, I was extremely quiet and well behaved, although I now meet people who remember me as not like that at all.

As he approached his 28th birthday in February 1840, Dickens knew himself to be famous, successful and tired. He needed a rest, and he made up his mind to keep the year free of the pressure of producing monthly installments of yet another long novel.

The whole world knows Dickens, his London and his characters.

Dickens belongs to the English people.

Dickens had more energy than anyone in the world, and he expected his sons to be like him, and they couldn't be.

Writers often feel obliged to adopt some sort of public appearance.

After Shakespeare, Dickens is the great creator of characters, multiple characters.