I think if the monarchy were removed tomorrow, it wouldn't have a huge effect on the national mind-set.

In my 20s I was in constant pain from undiagnosed endometriosis. With no prospect of a cure, I decided I needed a career - writing - that could accommodate being ill.

Beneath every history, another history.

People who wrote literary novels about the past probably didn't want them pegged as historical fiction. Certainly that was true in England.

It is almost a joke, but a joke that nobody tells.

Imagine the consequences of having the first woman prime minister who is the milk snatcher. [Margaret Thatcher] takes away the nourishment of the nation.

There's a feeling of power in reserve, a power that drives right through the bone, like the shiver you sense in the shaft of an axe when you take it into your hand. You can strike, or you can not strike, and if you choose to hold back the blow, you can still feel inside you the resonance of the omitted thing.