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.

For me, it is about using everything that is there and using the gaps in the record, figuring out why the gaps might be there. And then when you move on to the level of what historians said, laying the interpretations side by side. You also have to look back at the documents and make your own judgments. What the record says and what people say about it. A novelist can fill the gaps in a way that a biographer cannot.

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

I am very happy in second-hand bookshops; would a gardener not be happy in a garden?

History is always changing behind us, and the past changes a little every time we retell it.

Sometimes peace looks like war, you cannot tell them apart.

To me, Hillary [Clinton] looks alright. She looks like the kind of woman I admire. She doesn't seem to have distorted her essential nature.