At the time it seemed like a natural development of my interest in what was going on around me in society.

I like poking my nose into other people's lives.

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.

I think writers are very anxious.

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.

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.

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