And the ideologies trailed after these impossible events like condemned prisoners, as ideologies do when they've had their day. Because they have no heart of their own. They're the whores and angels of our striving selves.

When you're my age and you see a story, you better go for it pretty quickly. I'd just like to get a few more novels under my belt.

There are some subjects that can only be tackled in fiction.

When it comes to recruiting people for the secret world, what the recruiters are looking for is pretty much what I had. I was unanchored, looking for an institution to look after me. I had a bit of larceny. I understood larceny. I understood the natural criminality in people - because it was - it was all around me. And I have no doubt there was a chunk of it inside me too. Once I found that identity, it took root in me. It exactly - it gelled with the world that I'd known in the past.

I had two experiences of criminality: one was my conman father, the other was teaching at Eton

There are moments which are made up of too much stuff for them to be lived at the time they occur.

As our Governments spin, lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and looks the other way.