Ann Widdecombe
I am not an enthusiast when it comes to cities, preferring rolling scenery, wildlife and stars to museums, monuments, architecture and traffic.Collection: Architecture
Usually my Easter reading consists of 'Who Moved the Stone?,' which gets dusted off annually and read, often in one sitting, to remind me of the miracle of redemption, resurrection and life after death.Collection: Death
Great political leaders risk unpopularity, patiently explain their case and confront prejudice, bigotry and vested interests.
Not even the severest critics of Jeffrey Archer can deny his style.
Gentle mockery or sharp satire aimed at Christians and their leaders have been replaced by abuse of Christianity itself.
If someone calls you fat and you are fat, then it will be hurtful only if you feel you should not be fat.
I am toothy, dumpy, ugly, overweight, a spinster - what the hell?
If I were queen for a day, every city would have to spend one hour in utter silence: no music in shops and restaurants, no honking of horns, no conversations on mobile phones. Only birds would be allowed to sing.
I left the Church of England because there was a huge bundle of straw. The ordination of women was the last straw, but it was only one of many. For years I had been disillusioned by the Church of England's compromising on everything. The Catholic Church doesn't care if something is unpopular.
Secularism has no central goal, it's just promoting endless relativism. That's why there is a huge moral drift in the country. Everybody is infallible except the Pope, if you like.
Mice are everywhere at Westminster but many MPs, including me, did not report them because we were afraid of their possible fate.
I am a passionate opponent of fox hunting because the fox runs in fear of its life over a prolonged period, hearing the hounds getting closer and closer. Barbarous does not even begin to describe such a sport.
I don't analyse myself.
On the whole, my disposition is to say yes, unless I've got good reason to say no, and I think that's being in public life.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Example and general milieu, once considered so important in the nurture of children, are sacrificed on the altars of the false god we call free choice but which imprisons us all in a collective moral paralysis and delivers an anarchy that the State itself shrinks from challenging.
It's not a question of being out of touch or traditional. It's a question of wanting to preserve marriage as uniquely between a man and a woman. Gays get full civil rights with civil partnerships anyway.
The child in the womb has no voice but Parliament's. Many MPs who voted for the 1967 Act did not think they were abandoning the unborn because they were fooled by the supposed safeguards. Now we know just how ineffective those safeguards are.
The political classes are despised when they deal in sound bites, embrace tokenistic campaigns and feather their own nests while trying to please all of the people all of the time.
We need less political correctness and more political courage.
After 23 years closeted at Westminster, where often all you can see out of the windows are other parliamentary buildings, I appreciate space, and I retired to Dartmoor to find it.
The first visit I made to Australia was in 1996 when I was the prisons' minister and was looking at other countries' penal systems.
I am not normally a fan of organised tours: few public figures are, feeling themselves objects of constant curiosity.
The postcode lottery means that the level of care you get differs hugely around the country, and the health service simply cannot meet every demand that is put upon it.
Cats are ideal for politicians. I had two when I arrived at Westminster, Sooty and Sweep, who had come with a flat I had bought six years earlier in Fulham from someone who was about to go abroad. There was a better offer ahead of me but she took mine because I would take the cats.
Cats, unlike dogs, are independent creatures. They do not need walking and are content to be alone all day, providing they are fed.
In 1999 my father died and my mother was coming to live with me. So I left my Kennington flat and bought a house with a garden because my mother loved watching the birds.
Some of the finest comedies have chosen the Church as its subject and would indeed make most Christians laugh, give or take the occasional wince as a barb goes home. I have very fond memories of 'Our Man at St Marks' and long for the day when it is released on DVD but I won't hold my breath.
Stand-up comics tend to make two assumptions: that Christians have no sense of humour and that all their audiences are unbelievers.
We have no blasphemy laws these days but with that freedom comes the responsibility which should always attend the exercise of free speech: truth, courtesy and an awareness of impact. It is the last of these which is so neglected by so much modern comedy.
People wanted to protest, and Ukip's a conduit for that.
I'd rather form my own party than ever join Ukip. We could call it the Widdy Mob. I'm joking.
I am a Conservative: I'm never going to be anything else.
I always said it was my ambition to have a library - I have one - and my dream was to have a pool. Then 'Strictly' came along.
Insult is in the ear of the listener. Statements of fact cannot be insulting unless you feel that the label applied indicates some failing, moral or otherwise, in yourself.
In my schooldays, I was Titch, Skinny and Freckles. These days, I answer to Karloff, Fatty or even Twiggy from my more sarcastic friends. If they called me Ann I should wonder what I had done to offend them.
Some books are like an hors d'oeuvre - light, tasty and leaving you longing for the main course which is never going to come - and some are like Christmas lunch immediately after a cooked breakfast.
The Home Office is a vast department where business as usual means that something is going wrong and, given the nature of the business, the disasters rarely lack a high profile.
My detractors, who delight in using my name as a byword for unattractiveness, will find it hard to believe, but looking in the mirror is a pleasant experience.
I am so used to seeing a blond in the mirror that I forget that for most of my life I was very dark. Old photos are still a bit of a shock.
I shall not miss the hectoring and backbiting and the lack of generosity towards fallen foes, but I will miss the sheer clubability of parliament. If one fancies a coffee or a meal or a drink then it is always possible to find at least one person out of 646 whose company is congenial.
One of my best moments was getting a constituent out of jail in Morocco, by which of course I mean I got him released not that I sprung him.
It is a fundamental principle of democracy that citizens obey the law or incur whatever penalty applies to its breaking.
It is quite wrong that one group of people should regularly and deliberately flout the law, boast about it and get away with it.
I have always believed prison can be very, very good for you but not by the act of deprivation of liberty alone. There has to be more to life inside than that.
It is a huge asset to law and order that serious or persistent criminals should be taken out of the society on which they prey. It makes life safer for the law-abiding and on the whole prisons are pretty good at containing those who have been committed to them.
Unfortunately, if the man who leaves the prison gates is just as likely or - as is sometimes grievously the case - more likely to offend as he was when he entered them, then we fail not only the individual but public safety as well.
The regime in too many prisons is one of idleness, and locking up someone from such a background in idleness virtually guarantees re-offending. Instead there needs to be a full day's work every weekday in either the workshops or the education department or preferably a mixture of both.
I do not mind if a PM or leader of the opposition is single but if he or she chooses to dispense with marriage despite living with someone and having children, then I think that shows a contempt for marriage which sends an unfortunate message.
Having served as a member of parliament for more than two decades, I'm well aware that there can be genuine constraints that affect the speed at which certain issues progress.