How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre.

To possess another language is to possess another soul.

I mean, you can't be less ruthless than the opposition simply because your government's policy is benevolent, can you now?

You have no idea how humiliating it was, as a boy, to suddenly have all your clothes, your toys, snatched by the bailiff. I mean we were a middle-class family, it's not as if it was happening up and down the street. It made me ashamed, I felt dirty.

I grew up in a completely bookless household. It was my father's boast that he had never read a book from end to end.

It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies?

There is no such thing as a secure writer: every novel is an impossible mountain.