I started to write book reviews as a means of recording my thoughts about what I'd read before all memory of them vanished.

These days I'm probably happiest when I see my two daughters loving one another.

What did it for me was a blurb on the back of a book I was reading. The blurber wrote - I just looked it up - that "Trials have provided some of the best examples of 'micro-history' or the 'new narrative'...." And that was it.

If you neglect your blogs they don't take up much time.

When I post a review to book-blog.com it probably takes me - apart from writing the review, of course - 20 or 30 minutes to finish all my related tasks.But that's irregular, depending on how quickly I'm reading.

Every now and again your life's course can turn on one simple thing, some small decision the import of which isn't at all obvious at the time.

My life has been sadly lacking in snails. I can't clearly remember any first-hand encounters. The best thing I can come up with is second-hand, a passage in Jacques Pépin's autobiography (The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen) in which he describes prying snails from the terrace of his vacation home and cooking them up for dinner.