The only thing that I was equipped for with my very mediocre college Arts degree was to get a job in teaching.

But there are some wounds that can never be healed.

But I can't bear it when somebody who some man made a pass at - to call that violence seems to me absurd and insulting to women who've really met violence, who've been raped or bashed.

That's one of the things I hope that the book can do, is to restore some dignity to Joe Cinque.

Now, I - for several years while I was researching this book, I felt quite obsessed by thoughts about sentencing, punishment, how judges arrive at their decisions.

The rain began again. It fell heavily, easily, with no meaning or intention but the fulfilment of its own nature, which was to fall and fall.

To slide into the domed reading room at ten each morning, specially in summer, off the hot street outside, was a sensation as delicious as dropping into the water off the concrete edge of the Fitzroy Baths.