Barbara Cartland

"I have always found women difficult. I don't really understand them. To begin with, few women tell the truth."

"The great majority of people in England and America are modest, decent and pure-minded and the amount of virgins in the world today is stupendous."

"The right diet directs sexual energy into the parts that matter."

"France is the only place where you can make love in the afternoon without people hammering on your door."

"I will be voting for John Major. He is getting better and better every year. He is very, very good. He now speaks far better than he did. He's a brilliant speaker. He is learning to be a real leader. He really does speak out. Look around and who else is like the old leaders like Winston? I knew Winston when he was a little boy. He gradually got stronger and stronger. John Major came to lunch with me when he got in. He asked me what he should be doing. I said take England back to what it was. We really want lo be led, and John Major is leading as he has never before."

"The Labour Party are going to bring in a law that means you can go everywhere you want in the country. I have checked this with two people and they both said it was true. People will be able to walk into your garden and pick your flowers. It is absurd. My garden is a blaze of flowers. I don't want anyone In there."

"Like many other young girls in wartime, I read Barbara Cartland's Ronald Cartland, the life of her brother, a young, idealistic Conservative MP, who had fought appeasement all the way and who was killed at Dunkirk in 1940. In many ways her most romantic book, it was a striking testament to someone who had no doubt that the war was not only necessary but right, and whose thinking throughout his short life was "all of a piece", something which I always admired."