It was only after five years in the army, when I was having to do a very boring job in a very boring place, that I thought: 'Why not try writing a novel?' partly out of youthful arrogance and partly because there had been a long line of writers in my mother's family.

When I was younger I used to get my best writing done at night, but now it has to be during the day. I usually finish work at half past seven, then go back to the house to open a bottle of wine, have dinner, and then read or watch television.

When my first novel was published, I went in great excitement round bookshops in central London to see if they had stocked it.

The blurring of fact and fiction has great commercial potential, which is bound to be corrupting in historical terms.

I can't envisage stopping writing.

If you smash a city when you're trying to capture it, you actually end up providing the perfect terrain for the defenders while blocking the access for your own armoured vehicles.

I feel slightly uneasy at the way historians are consulted as if history is going to repeat itself. It never does.