The fleet sailed to its war base in the North Sea, headed not so much for some rendezvous with glory as for rendezvous with discretion.

If I had taken a doctoral degree, it would have stifled any writing capacity.

For me, the card catalog has been a companion all my working life. To leave it is like leaving the house one was brought up in.

No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision.

Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip.

The writer's object is - or should be - to hold the reader's attention.

Reasonable orders are easy enough to obey; it is capricious, bureaucratic or plain idiotic demands that form the habit of discipline.

The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard.

To put away one's own original thoughts in order to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost.

Diplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the interim period, appeasement of Fascism.