There are no young people who know how to debate, who know how to vote, and who know how to persuade people to vote. And you have seen this in Paraguay and they are reaping the harvest now of fifty years of dictatorship.

There is a whole genre of funny travel writers - that's very popular. There's Bill Bryson and people who follow that route and sell travel writing through making people laugh. It's a very difficult group to take. The line between comedy and mockery is sometimes a bit thin.

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.

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

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

It is a gift, and you realize as soon as you cross the border into Paraguay, as I did, the first time in '82, that you are in a sort of wonderland. Nothing is quite right: the buildings, they've got their own architecture, their own language; and everything is just a little bit off key.

I'd like to write fiction. Perhaps at some stage.