Jeremy Hardy

Instead of people thinking, 'Oh God, look at this terrible refugee crisis; we must do our bit', there's a lot of people thinking, 'How can we get out of doing our bit and find reasons not to provide sanctuary for these people?'

The thing that interests me most about family history is the gap between the things we think we know about our families and the realities.

For me, ancestry is just one thing that connects us to people, and feeling connected to other people is generally a good thing, as long as one kind of connection does not have primacy over all the others. Heredity, race and nationhood are not the best criteria by which to judge our fellow humans.

I've always thought I'd like to be something more exotic than C of E. I can't even say I'm lapsed. You don't lose your faith when you are Church of England - you just can't remember where you left it.

My idea of family is not dominated by blood ties. Families are fragile things, and I think it is social pressure and emotional attachments that keep them together.

Chemistry seems to be pretty much nailed down, and biology gains ground all the time. But physics seems to be mired in idle rumination. They think a Big Bang started the universe, but they don't really know.

I feel that our attitude to our borders is wrong; it's the first time that an awful lot of people think you can and should just close your border and remain in this splendid isolation.

My maternal grandmother had what might be described in a school report as a 'lively imagination.' She told us that she was a direct descendant of Sir Christopher Wren.