People are very interested in politics, they just don't like it labelled politics.

The first two Prime Ministers whom I served, Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher drew strikingly different lessons from the Second World War.

Margaret Thatcher, growing up in a bombed and battered Britain, derived a distrust which has grown with the years not just of Germany but of all continental Europe.

It was essentially for self defence that we went to war in Afghanistan and would go to war in Iraq.

Ten Downing Street is a house, not an office. That is its most important characteristic.

Men like Hitler and Stalin and their immediate lieutenants cannot plead in defence of their actions that these were justified by the accepted values of that time.

There is nothing false or arrogant about German pride in German technical and business skills.

Margaret Thatcher was fearful of German unification because she believed that this would bring an immediate and formidable increase of economic strength to a Germany which was already the strongest economic partner in Europe.

It is normal for politicians in all countries to profess themselves the pupils of history, anxious to draw the right lessons from her teaching.

If Margaret Thatcher had been Prime Minister at the time, there would have been no Treaty of Maastricht.

People know they are lacking something, they are constantly wanting some kind of spiritual guidance.

Diplomacy is unfashionable in the world of knee-jerk reaction and the dogmatic sound bite on television.

No military timetable should compel war when a successful outcome, namely a disarmed Iraq may be feasible without war, for example by allowing more time to the UN inspectors.

I may be wrong in that, but not I think in putting the questions. In our modern democracy the government needs not a unanimous but a general support for war before it orders our forces to fight.

We, Britain and Germany, can neither of us be happy about our handling of the Iraq war.

Despite this lamentable lack of balance in our education I do not believe that either children or adults in my country are permeated by a widespread hostility to Germany.

We should be wary of politicians who profess to follow history while only noticing those signposts of history that point in the direction which they themselves already favour.

A genuinely democratic Iraq might well act as a fresh spur.

We must admit that history is enjoyable to a large extent because it enables us to pass judgment on the past.

History provides no precise guidelines.