The language has got to be fully alive - I can't bear dull, flaccid writing myself and I don't see why any reader should put up with it.

I didn't choose Russia but Russia chose me. I had been fascinated from an early age by the culture, the language, the literature and the history to the place.

However, the difficulties and pleasures of the writing itself are similar for a novel with a historical setting and a novel with a contemporary setting, as far as I'm concerned.

If we understand the past, we are more likely to recognise what is happening around us.

Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn’t work, throw it away.

Mourning Ruby is not a flat landscape: it is more like a box with pictures painted on every face. And each face is also a door which opens, I hope, to take the reader deep into the book.

I enjoy research; in fact research is so engaging that it would be easy to go on for years, and never write the novel at all.