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 love Mikhail Bulgakov. He is very original and takes the story to unexpected places. I didn't realise political writing could be so funny.

In prose, leaps of logic can be made while the protagonist thinks about things and arrives at conclusions. Even with voiceover, there's no real way of having an inner voice without it taking over the entire story.

I have two children. They are more fun than anything in the world, and it's more immediate fun than the hard slog of writing.

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

I'm always represented as a bit of a class warrior - a bit Down With Men and Down With Middle-Class People. Whereas I'm actually very fond of men and am middle-class. I even went to boarding school in Perthshire.

I grew up in London under Thatcher and that really was disgusting. A feeding frenzy.