Fiction isn't made by scraping the bones of topicality for the last shreds and sinews, to be processed into mechanically recovered prose. Like journalism, it deals in ideas as well as facts, but also in metaphors, symbols and myths.

Fiction leaves us so much work to do, allows the individual so much input; you have to see, you have to hear, you have to taste the madeleine, and while you are seemingly passive in your chair, you have to travel.

I loved Gore Vidal's Burr. That book gave me courage.

When you become published and become a reviewer, piles of books come along and you are pushed by fashion and what you are commissioned to do.

Fear of commitment lies behind the fear of writing.

One of the frustrations of someone like Thomas Cromwell is that, before they step into the light of history, and become extremely well documented, they are not known. A king might be well documented but not everyone.

My concern is less the monarchy as such than the attempt of a fading colonial power to hang onto grandeur.