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

She was lonely without Blunt, but she was lonelier at the idea that the world went on as though she had not loved him.

I wrote every day between the ages of 12 and 20 when I stopped because I went to Barcelona, where life was too exciting to write.

I work very deliberately, with a plan. But sometimes I come to a point that I planned as the end and it needs softening. Ending a novel is almost like putting a child to sleep - it can't be done abruptly.

“One Minus One’”and “Barcelona, 1975” are more or less autobiographical.

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.

I've never put Northern Ireland into a novel because it's not my territory. I come from the South, so my imaginative territory is very much the Republic of Ireland rather than the North. Even though, if I wrote a novel about the North, it might sell more.