I think it took me half a page of 'Wolf Hall' to think: 'This is the novel I should have been writing all along.'

I think it took me half a page of 'Wolf Hall' to think: 'This is the novel I should have been writing all along.'

So many years of preparation, for what was called adult life: was it for this?

When I came to write my Thomas Cromwell books, I moved onto the center ground of English history, but I was never there before. I didn't feel it was my history particularly, coming from Northern Britain, being of Irish extraction, being a cradle Catholic. The image of England I grew up with felt somewhere else. There was an official England in postcards, but it wasn't one I had visited. But I decided to march onto the center ground and occupy it whether it was mine or not.

Fortitude. ... It means fixity of purpose. It means endurance. It means having the strength to live with what constrains you.

As a writer, you owe it to yourself not to get stuck in a rut of looking at the world in a certain way.

If you have a good story idea, don't assume it must form a prose narrative. It may work better as a play, a screenplay or a poem. Be flexible.