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.

The noise that we can expect in the future will only increase and we'll be wishing for rural Portugal or something like that.

I am always surprised when people do get upset. Perhaps its just the nutty people who write to newspapers who get upset.

One does have to learn to travel with a degree of humility and that reflected in writing and personality.

I have dipped into Ian McEwan and so on. I tend not to stick with one writer. But I dip in here and there.

I am certainly very pro-Europe.

I have to be careful not to visit one place right after the other and write one book after the other. Because I fear writing the same book all over again. That's why I am taking a break and doing something different this time.