A biography for Andrew Neilhasn’t been written yet.
“I haven't got a family. I live to work.”
“With sad, depressing predictability, the children of today's underclass become tomorrow's criminals and dropouts.”
“When one English person speaks, another one immediately classifies him. No class system in the world is so audible, which is also why it is so pernicious and enduring.”
“Memo to self: never again try to travel by train in Britain on a Sunday.”
“Americans have this patrician attitude that they have a God-given right to produce these boring newspapers and not be challenged to do it. 'The New York Times' really thinks it's the BBC.”
“I never set out to get married and the way things have worked out I never have.”
“Since the Holocaust, anti-Semitism is no longer respectable. It was in the 1920s and '30s, but the Holocaust obviously changed that.”
“Those who claim to be in the know say Baros is nothing out of the ordinary as Maldivian islands go - that Reethi Ra is far more fashionable, Soneva Fushi more eco-compliant. Truth to tell, they all look pretty much alike from a distance.”
“It is actually getting much harder for someone from an ordinary background to break through the ranks. In the period from 1964 to 1997, every single Prime Minister - from Harold Wilson to John Major - was the product of a state school.”
“When I was growing up the obvious antisemites were the knuckle-draggers in the National Front.”
“I don't say for a moment that the far right is no longer a problem. We have seen the neo-Nazi nutters in Charlottesville in America.”
“As one of the grammar-school generation, I grew up as part of a postwar meritocracy that steadily infiltrated the citadels of power.”
“I'm a bit of a loner.”
“Not all Republicans in the class of 2010 owe their seats to the Tea Party. But many do.”
“If the traditional British elite had made a great success of running my country, as successful, say, as the elites of Germany, Japan and America, then maybe it would be a club worth joining.”
“As class barriers tumbled and Britain became a more meritocratic society, young, well-educated Scots were best placed to exploit the new social mobility.”
“Ever since I left the 'Sunday Times' there has been a group of scribes waiting for me to fall on my face, and having a go at my commercial record, looking to pick holes in it.”
“I'm not arguing for a return to the grammar school system, but there must be a way of identifying bright kids from ordinary backgrounds and giving them a world-class education.”
“With growing economic prowess comes, of course, military power.”
“Class and the snobbery it provokes still matter far too much in Britain, but we are a far more mobile society than we used to be.”