I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the second world war.

Louis de Bernires is in the direct line that runs through Dickens and Evelyn Waugh. . .he has only to look into his world, one senses, for it to rush into reality, colours and touch and taste.

Well, I would hardly say I do write as yet. But I write because I like words. I suppose if I liked stone I might carve. I like words. I like reading. I notice particular words. That sets me off.

I don't only write about English literature; I also write about chaos theory and... ants. I can understand ants.

When I was a child - in wartime, pre-television - books were my life.

On buses and trains, I always think about the inexhaustible variety of human genes. We see types, and occasionally twins, but never doubles. All faces are unique, and this is exhilarating, despite the increasingly plastic similarity of TV stars and actors.

The reading eye must do the work to make them live, and so it did, again and again, never the same life twice, as the artist had intended.