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 tend to prefer traveling in the Third World countries. Like Ethiopia. Or Eritrea.

India, to some extent, courses through my blood. My father was brought up there, and my grandfather served there, and so on. We have a very strong family affinity for the place.

If you see our best seller list, most of them are books that are given as gifts. They are books you give to flatter somebody.

I am always surprised to go into a bar in Boston and three televisions are playing different channels, all at once. We are constantly surprised by this noise and television. It means that's what we are going to get, because we always get everything eventually.

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.

That's more about lifestyle [Peter Mayles], living abroad. It's about buying a donkey and house in south France, and that's a slightly different thing. A very popular genre but that's not quite my thing.