I feel better off doing what I know how to do. I feel a strong element of fictional style in travel writing anyway. Some call it creative nonfiction.

I don't therefore know how to write for the big papers. It must be kids - students - and retired people. And the reality is they are overwhelmed with people sending in their holiday stories and bits and pieces and so on.

I don't want to sell other people trips! I want to be there!

I realize how much [Mark] Twain fabricated things. I like it very much, but it's only half true. And it shows what he was trying to do, which was just entertain. Which he does very successfully, though the humor is almost dated now.

I find the public reaction to writing - it's fascinating in this modern age. Of course people are able to interact with me and email me, and I get quite a few I suppose.

I wonder if this reason is partly geographical, that talk radio is so much more successful in North America than in Britain? People who are very remote - I'm thinking of Newfoundland - feel very connected though the radio.

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.