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

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

A lot of books are sold and given away as presents. But who actually reads and enjoy reading?

I am certainly very pro-Europe.

This terrible frustration that we so often feel in the West in not being able to articulate and express ourselves.

Lawrence Millman is a favorite writer of mine. He did a travels on the trail of the Vikings.

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.