“I find a fence a very uncomfortable place to squat my bottom.”

Brian Mulroney, myself, [and] Rajiv Gandhi; I think that was the real core [of the Commonwealth ]. That was the engine room, I reckon.

I hated [Robert Mugabe]. He’s one of the worst human beings I’ve ever met. He treated black and white with equal contempt. He was a horrible human being.

While society cannot provide employment for its members, the production/work/income nexus has to be abandoned as a justification for our present parsimony to the unemployed.

And it did seem to me that one way that we could bring the apartheid regime down would be if we did mount an effective investment sanction.

The things which are most important don’t always scream the loudest.

[John Howard] led the Government. They had the numbers, and just basically automatically went along with the Americans.

I think there are a number of reasons, not least of which is the personality of the Queen [ Elizabeth II]. It’s very easy to underrate her significance.

You’ve got to remember the Cold War was a very real thing then, so the relationship with the United States was very, very important.

We had a very good relationship. Very good. I liked [Sonny Ramphal]. I thought he was a genuine man.

[ Elizabeth II] has immersed herself, in the sense [that] she can speak intelligently about any and all members of the Commonwealth and she has played a role.

One other thing: at the meeting in Canada, [there was] the coup in Fiji. This comes to an important part of the Commonwealth: the role of the Queen [Elizabeth II]. I had absolutely just enormous respect for her as leader of the Commonwealth.

Geoffrey [Howe] and I were mates, and he disagreed with [ Margaret Thatcher] position. So, we cooperated surreptitiously.

The first meeting in 1983 was held in India and I was very off put by her. I just couldn’t abide her, basically.

We [ with Brian Mulroney and Rajiv Gandhi] went to the meeting in Canada [the 1987 Vancouver CHOGM] and I said to them there that sanctions weren’t working; they were just being busted.

The world will not wait for us.

And that’s what brought the regime down. The last South African Finance Minister, Barend du Plessis, went on record as saying that it was the investment sanctions that put the final nail in the coffin of apartheid.

The test of an outfielder’s skill comes when he has to go against the fence to make a catch.

It makes a difference doesn’t it, whether we fully fence ourselves in, or whether we are fenced out by the barriers of others?

A Labour minister gets it in the neck if he looks at his neighbour’s wife over the garden fence.

If a man were to look over the fence on one side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his left had laid his garden path round a central lawn; and were to look over the fence on the other side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his right had laid his path down the middle of the lawn.

Intelligence inbound with the entire of reality, not fenced off, integral to that All. […] Then it was as if One voice sounded.

I think there’s no question that the barriers, the fences and in certain urban areas, the walls, have had an important effect in terms of increasing the manageability and the security of the border.

There, by the starlit fences The wanderer halts and hears My soul that lingers sighing About the glimmering weirs.

I do believe that there are African Americans who have thick accents. My mom has a thick accent; my relatives have thick accents. But sometimes you have to adjust when you go into the world of film, TV, theatre, in order to make it accessible to people.