"Edward, Edward," he said with a patronising smile, "there are no unanswered questions of any relevance. Every question that we need to ask has been answered fully. If you can't find the correct answer then you are obviously asking the wrong question."

I've got six months to sort out the hackers, get the Japanese knotweed under control and find an acceptable form of narcissus.

If only life were that simple; if one could jump to the good parts and flick through the bad.

I wished I could share my own optimism.

Books may look like nothing more than words on a page, but they are actually an infinitely complex imaginotransference technology that translates odd, inky squiggles into pictures inside your head.

Whenever I'm giving talks, I always ask people to think of the most obscure questions because I enjoy those the most. I always get the same questions: Why does Pickwick say "plock" and will there be a movie? I like the really obscure questions because there's so much in the books. There are tons and tons of references and I like when people get the little ones and ask me about them. It's good for the audience [and also] they realize there's more there.

Lesson one in time travel, Thursday. First of all, we are all time travellers. The vast majority of us manage only one day per day.