In Western Civilization - America and Britain - if you see people talking and it becomes an argument and voices are raised, you are not surprised if violence follows. Hopefully it won't, but you are not surprised.

I'll always love Paraguay. It's this most exotic place configured out of the imagination, the whole country.Paraguay will always be a special place in my heart. I go back a long way. I first arrived as a refugee in 1982 from the Falklands War. So it was a safe haven then, and it has become something exotic since then. I feel like I'd like the dust to settle a little bit before going back.

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 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.

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.

Diplomacy was what I wanted to do. From really quite an early age and I think I had a false impression that diplomacy equals travel.

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.