I am a creature of my pen. My pen is the best of me.

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

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.

Novels arise out of the shortcomings of History.

I did a lot of my writing as though I was an academic, doing some piece of research as perfectly as possible.

Biographies are no longer written to explain or explore the greatness of the great. They redress balances, explore secret weaknesses, demolish legends.

Lists are a form of power.