Writers seem to me to be people who need to retire from social life and do a lot of thinking about what's happened - almost to calm themselves.

I think writers are very anxious.

I'm full of restlessness. Not lonely, exactly - my head is racing with ideas. But it is that old treacherous feeling that real life is happening somewhere else, and I'm left out.

But there are some wounds that can never be healed.

Well, I'm at some kind of crossroads in my life and I don't know which way to take. It's not about money, I mean, because I'm established enough now as a writer to get a reasonable advance if I wanted to do fiction.

I think some people wished I'd kept myself out of the book. But I kind of insist on it because I want the reader to share my engagement with the material, if you like, not pretend that I'm doing it completely intellectually.

We were in a great, seething moment in the 1970s. There was a new Labour government and everything seemed full of hope... But, as we got older and we saw how much women's behaviour contributed to what was wrong, we stopped being able to see ourselves purely as.