It may be enough to study history in all its nuance and ambiguity for its own sake. But there is no country free of the need to find new ways of reading the past as an inspiring way of thinking about everything else, including the present.

Writing tends to be very deliberate. A novelist could probably run a military campaign with some success. They could certainly run a country.

It is important to find a publisher and equally important not to be noticed until your third or fourth book.

I live in words. I like looking at things, but I don't have a strong visual imagination.

It really matters to writers to find and treasure readers, all the more when they're on the other side of the world.

I am violently untidy. My desk is overcrowded. I write my first drafts in longhand in a long notebook using a plastic throwaway fountain pen. Then I work on a word processor using a different desk and a different room.

I first went to Barcelona in 1975 after university, and I stayed for three years. I learnt Catalan because that's what everyone speaks in the mountains. They speak English to foreigners, but what people say to each other is much more important than what they say to you.