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

Love is whatever you can still betray. Betrayal can only happen if you love.

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

After all, if you make your enemy look like a fool, you lose the justification for engaging him.

I think that most of my books are part of some process of self-education, often about the places I go to. Most of all, they are about the peculiar tension between institutional loyalty and loyalty to oneself; the mystery of patriotism, for a Brit of my age and generation, where it runs, how it should be defined, what it's worth and what a corrupting force it can be when misapplied. All that stuff is just in me and it comes out in the characters. I don't mean to preach, but I know I do, and I'm a very flawed person. It's quite ridiculous.

I mean, I'm in the business of storytelling, not message making.

I've got more than one string to my bow, and I thought I'd give this one a twang.