During the 20th century, the greatest danger to European stability was Germany's sense of its special destiny. During the 21st century, the greatest danger to European stability is Germany's reluctance to accept its special destiny.

My standard Nando's order is a chicken breast burger served 'medium,' which is still fairly spicy.

There's an awful lot of us who don't quite speak finance, speak money.

The deconstructed, postmodern pizza has been with us for ages, and the fact is that pretty much every ingredient in the world has been used as a pizza topping and liked by somebody, somewhere.

Money is like poetry because both involve learning to communicate in a compressed language that packs a lot of meaning and consequence into the minimum semantic space.

I grew up abroad, and when I first passed through London in the 1970s, it seemed a drab and provincial place.

'Dead peasants insurance' is a term that sounds as if it comes straight out of Monty Python. If only that were true.

Is it OK to admit to being slightly obsessed with the TV programme 'Great British Menu?'

If European monetary policy is run according to German interests, huge structural imbalances will accumulate. The Germans will then either have to pay to correct those imbalances or agree that the euro should not be run primarily according to German interests. If they are unwilling to do either of those things, the euro can't survive.

France and Britain have large culinary differences, but one thing they do share is a relatively low tolerance for modernist cooking.

Once I've properly finished a book, my ideal state of being would be to never think about it again. But with 'Capital,' I felt I'd spent so much time with the characters that they were very, very real, and I definitely had a sense of loss about leaving them behind in a way I've not quite had before.

A preoccupation with money and, especially, with what money meant was, in our family, an inherited thing. My father's father, Jack, who died before I was born, was very much possessed by the idea that money was freedom.

If we are going to remake society in the image of the fight against terrorism and put that secret fight at the heart of our democratic order - which is the way we're heading - we need to discuss it, and in public.

Security is a complicated idea and one with an immense potential to trap us - that was one lesson I learnt from my father.

Tapas is one of the world's most civilised drinking and eating traditions.

I love short stories, but I've never had the impulse to write one. Same for ghost stories.

Because the Spanish eat so crazily late - anybody who's been to Spain has had the experience of sitting down at 9:30 P.M. to find themselves the first customer in the restaurant - they tend to favour an early-evening drink and a nibble to keep them going.

For a while, I had a rule of no smartphone in bed, but now I've upgraded to no smartphone in the bedroom. The fact that we need rules shows how much these things have invaded our lives.

I'm a huge fan of Peter Jackson's 'Lord of the Rings' movies - I went to all three of them on the day they opened and have seen all of them several times since.

I'm fortunate in having journalism as a sideline to pay the bills, and I essentially do it in order to take as long as I want with books.

I write non-fiction quicker, and I write it on a computer. Fiction I write longhand, and that helps make it clear that it comes from a slightly different part of the brain, I think.

The early-'80s recession was good for good restaurants, not least because it put bad ones out of business.

Photography brought a lot to painting because it forced artists to think about what painting could do that photography couldn't.

Nando's is a casual restaurant rather than a fast-food one - another aspirational touch. The food is energetically spiced, where so many of its competitors are bland and grilled to order, where the competition fries food and then lets it sit around.