Combined families often get bad reviews, but the family my children got when they traded away 'the suffocating four-person' nuclear one is one that has benefited all of them.

Sometimes, a novel is like a train: the first chapter is a comfortable seat in an attractive carriage, and the narrative speeds up. But there are other sorts of trains, and other sorts of novels. They rush by in the dark; passengers framed in the lighted windows are smiling and enjoying themselves.

Progressivism is usually seen as a stepping back from individualism into a progressive community...

Vets do what doctors used to - diagnose the injury or the condition, patch it up as best they can and remind you that these things happen and that in life we are also in the midst of death.

I'm a natural novelist. I'm interested in the person and the group, and how they mesh. And one of the ways I don't want them to mesh is for the person to be subsumed into the group.

Love is a general emotion. Marriage is exactingly specific.

I have reared, or helped to rear, five children and the scariest bit, bar none, is the learning to drive part. It has filled me with anxiety not only about the children, but also about my former self and my friends.