I have real fears for Cuba based on the South American experience. Where you have had such a stern regime, as Fidel's [Castro], there is no culture of politics.

Originally I wanted to be a diplomat, and by attrition I started giving up that idea.

I have a nice little idea from some people I met there who are now in their seventies, and I want to tell their story about the revolution through the eyes of musicians, in fact. The '59 Revolution. And what has happened to them since. It's very much a Cuban story. They haven't fared too well.

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

What's fascinating is where they come from in the world. People in Bangladesh, a chap in a fire-base in Tikrit in Iraq. Chap in an Irish pub in Dublin. And lovely to think this literary network - or rather network of readers - is well spread out.

Argentina is really in a different category because they butchered all their Indian or indigenous people in the war of the desert in 1850s. Which sets them aside from their neighbors in a macabre way.