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.

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 want people to laugh with me and Paraguay and Newfoundland, but I don't want to laugh at them. I hope in my books at the end of the day you come across with the impression that I really admire both of these places.

Radio is very popular [in Britain], but it doesn't connect us in the same way. It seems to have this community function.

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

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

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.