American travel writing is very healthy. I'm always flicking through the reviews and I see plenty of travel writing - and an impressive line up and continual demand.

What's fascinating is where they come from in the world. People in Bangladesh, a chap in a fire-base in Tikrit in Iraq. Chap in an Irish pub in Dublin. And lovely to think this literary network - or rather network of readers - is well spread out.

There are no young people who know how to debate, who know how to vote, and who know how to persuade people to vote. And you have seen this in Paraguay and they are reaping the harvest now of fifty years of dictatorship.

I am sure you have met diplomats; they probably travel far less than you do. Okay, they get to know a place very intensely - sometimes only the capitol city.

My parents probably feel closer to the U.S. They feel America came to our rescue in the war and all that sort of thing. And for their generation the war still goes on. We still save food and little bits get scraped off and boiled out the next day.

My parents don't think about Europe at all. The Continent is somewhere else. And they call it the Continent - to reflect, they are no real part of it.

Originally I wanted to be a diplomat, and by attrition I started giving up that idea.