I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the Second World War.

Once upon a time, when men and women hurtled through the air on metal wings, when they wore webbed feet and walked on the bottom of the sea, learning the speech of whales and the songs of the dolphins, when pearly-fleshed and jewelled apparitions of Texan herdsmen and houris shimmered in the dusk on Nicaraguan hillsides, when folk in Norway and Tasmania in dead of winter could dream of fresh strawberries, dates, guavas and passion fruits and find them spread next morning on their tables, there was a woman who was largely irrelevant, and therefore happy.

I actually collect old First and Second World War memorabilia.

We tend to think about fascism in terms of the Second World War.

The U.N. system, born after the Second World War, collapsed. It's worthless.

I was brought up in the War. I was an adolescent in the Second World War. And I did witness in London a great deal of the Blitz.