Because I write a book a year, I always want to do one other project every year that's stimulating in a different way. It means you can be working but not using up your prose juice, you know?

My upbringing was middle-class but my parents' families were both working-class so I had this odd combination of working-class background but in a privileged position.

I think the negative traits are what makes us love other human beings, the foibles and the flaws.

I'd read so much right-wing crime fiction where they find the evidence and shoot the bad guy - I thought there must be another approach.

Journalism is a Darwinian process.

Most of the people who write to me are really clever, really engaged. They just want to say that they have read my book and liked it.

None of us know what is going to sell or what people want to read.