Watching a whole cluster of friends, and my own mother, die over quite a short space of time convinced me that purely materialist 'explanations' for our mysterious human existence simply won't do - on an intellectual level.
I believe the collapse of the House of Windsor is tied in with the collapse of the Church of England.
Fear of death has never played a large part in my consciousness - perhaps unimaginative of me.
Tennyson seems to be the patron saint of the wishy washies, which is perhaps why I admire him so much, not only as a poet, but as a man.
I don't think you can tell the objective truth about a person. That's why people write novels.
If you read about Mussolini or Stalin or some of these other great monsters of history, they were at it all the time, that they were getting up in the morning very early. They were physically very active. They didn't eat lunch.
