I'm an afternoon tea type of girl. I come from a Russian background where we love our teas. So between lunch and dinner after training I come home and I love a nice cup of tea with jam in it as we drink it there. Black English Breakfast with raspberry jam is my favorite.

One of the great privileges of having grown up in a middle-class literary English household but having gone to school in the front lines in Southeast London was that I became half-street-urchin and half-good-boy at home. I knew that dichotomy was possible.

I think what is British about me is my feelings and awareness of others and their situations. English people are always known to be well mannered and cold but we are not cold - we don't interfere in your situation. If we are heartbroken we don't scream in your face with tears - we go home and cry on our own.

Yes they broke the law but we can't deport them. Let's get over this pointing fingers and do something about that whether it - they have to pay a fine learn to speak English the history you can do that. And then you have to give visas for the skills we need.

Today for the first time in history a Bishop of Rome sets foot on English soil. This fair land once a distant outpost of the pagan world has become through the preaching of the Gospel a beloved and gifted portion of Christ's vineyard.

There is no happiness in love except at the end of an English novel.

The essays in The Great Taos Bank Robbery were my project to win a Master of Arts degree in English when I quit being a newspaper editor and went back to college.

Both my parents are English and came out to Australia in 1967. I was born the following year. My parents and immigrants like them were known as '£10 poms.' Back then the Australian government was trying to get educated British people and Canadians - to be honest educated white people - to come and live in Australia.

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

You know what the Englishman's idea of compromise is? He says Some people say there is a God. Some people say there is no God. The truth probably lies somewhere between these two statements.