I think Britain has this tradition which suggests that if you make the readers laugh too much, you can't really be serious. Whereas, I think one of the functions laughter can perform in a book, as in life, is that it's a reaction to genuine horror.
In the span of a human lifetime, and well within the collective memory, Britain went from a stable imperial power ruling an appreciable fraction of the Earth's surface to being a tumultuous patchwork which was at least superficially in decline.
Growing up in Britain as a rather loose Jew, the two things that didn't belong together were freedom and religious intensity. In America, they do. The Founding Fathers made a bet that if you didn't force everyone to profess religion in their own particular way, you could protect intellectual freedom, and religion would flourish.
Once established with Great Britain, it would not be difficult, with moderation and prudence, to establish permanent peace with the rest of the world, when our most sanguine hopes of prosperity may be realized.
It does not seem to me that the steps which would be needed to make Britain - and others - more comfortable in their relationship in the European Union are inherently so outlandish or unreasonable.
Even in Britain, the trade unions tell me that employment contracts have less protection than in the past.
We do not always appreciate the role the Queen has played in one of the most significant changes in the past 60 years: the transformation of Britain into a multi-ethnic, multi-faith society. No one does interfaith better than the Royal family, and it starts with the Queen herself.
In January 1776, Thomas Paine issued 'Common Sense,' advocating independence from Great Britain.
I am just as comfortable in Britain and France as I am in America... but nowhere is perfect.
The moral of filmmaking in Britain is that you will be screwed by the weather.
I did not want to put myself on the line, as an Australian playing Britain's greatest comic actor. The fans of Sellers are obsessive, possessive - and aggressive. I did not want to risk their anger - or my own reputation.
There is a Western world. There is America. There is Great Britain and Germany and France and Russia and China and other nations. I doubt that there is one country amongst those I mentioned which has a desire to see Iran, with its fundamentalist, Islamic, extremist government, possessing nuclear weapons.
Britain's passion for Christmas and huge white weddings dates from Victorian times - both were low-key celebrations before Victoria and her PR machine.
There is much in the result of John Chilcot's seven-year inquiry into the decision-making that led to Britain's involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq that can be cited to excuse headlines that refer to his findings as 'scathing' and 'damning.'
I think I owe it to myself and my fans in Britain to play one more Wimbledon.
Something is happening to Britain and the British. Or has happened. We are said to be passing through a transition, or a turning point, or a transformation; nobody is quite sure which.
Whole communities are growing up without fathers or male role models. Bringing up a family in the best of circumstances is not easy. To try to do it by placing the entire burden on women - 91% of single-parent families in Britain are headed by the mother, according to census data - is practically absurd and morally indefensible.
Mr. Churchill is proud of Britain's stand alone, after France had fallen and before America entered the War.
Globalisation means that for a high-wage, developed economy like Britain's to compete we need to focus our efforts on the highly skilled, added-value sectors such as advanced manufacturing, creative industries, engineering and even financial services.
Britain's legal structure is basically the same as in feudal times: laws are written for the elite.
The U.S. and Britain are incapable of controlling all of Iraq.
The reality of Britain is vibrant multiculturalism, but the myth we export is an all-white world of lords and ladies. Conversely, American society is pretty segregated, but the myth it exports is of a racial melting-pot, everyone solving crimes and fighting aliens side by side.
What began as a revolt in response to the King of Great Britain's repeated injuries against the colonies, soon became a passionate and glorious call to fight for the beginnings of a new country.
The trouble with the Labour Party leadership and the trade union leadership, they're quite willing to applaud millions on the streets of the Philippines or in Eastern Europe, without understanding the need to also produce millions of people on the streets of Britain.
Will you permit the sacred fire of liberty, brought by your fathers from the venerable temples of Britain, to be quenched and trodden out on the simple altars they have raised?
The idea seems to be to use the next treaty talks to strike a grand bargain: Britain will be helpful to those states wishing to establish a fiscal union among themselves if, in exchange, we can amicably derogate from the aspects of the EU which we dislike.
I think America and Britain have a different culture from France. They discovered marketing and consumerism before France.
I married a young Englishman in Cambridge in 1955 and have lived in Britain every since.
I am firmly of the view we should keep the police out of politics in Britain, or we risk going the way of American politics, where the Whitewater investigation lasted virtually the whole of the two terms of the Clinton administration but turned up nothing.
I don't do as many readings as I used to. There was a time when I was on the road a lot more, at home in Ireland, in Britain, in Canada and the States, a time when I had more stamina and appetite for it.
The wrongful arrest of tens of thousands of British Muslims after the September 11 attacks can be explained by the very poor intelligence the police had, and, just possibly, excused by the fact that a terrorist action in Britain linked to British Muslims would have been hugely damaging.
Britain, today, educates 4.8 million primary school children in Britain. And we educate five million primary school children around the developing world, at a cost of 2.5 per cent of what we spend on British children.
Both in Britain and America, huge publicity has been given to stem cells, particularly embryonic stem cells, and the potential they offer. Of course, the study of stem cells is one of the most exciting areas in biology, but I think it is unlikely that embryonic stem cells are likely to be useful in healthcare for a long time.
We discovered that there was a great deal of keen interest in America for the kinds of products that we thought could be produced here. Also there was an interest in Britain for Australian material generally.
But you know we couldn't compare what we do with what the British athletes did at the Olympics. We are very proud to be British and if we have done our bit to promote Britain in a historic year for the country that's brilliant.
For John le Carre, it was always who's betraying who: the hall-of-mirrors kind of thing. When you go back to the '30s, it's a case of good vs. evil, and no kidding. When I have a hero who believes France and Britain are on the right side, a reader is not going to question that.
