Liberals in the US don't have great passions about Margaret Thatcher. Conservatives do. For all the worship that Ronald Reagan elicits in conservative circles in the US, I would venture that Thatcher did far more to reshape British society than Reagan did here. When I moved to Britain, the utilities were state-run. By the time I left, most of that was privatized. Thatcher had broken the miners' union, all but crushed the Labour Party, cut back the welfare state, even flirted with a poll tax. In the circles I ran in, Reagan was mocked as a childish dolt. Thatcher was despised.

I was very disciplined when home - lights out for the girls at 9:00, two hours of writing for me. It was murder on my marriage.

There is, in my mind, no higher compliment to pay a non-fiction book than to say it reads like a novel.

The professions of novelist and journalist are very separate. As a novelist, you are ultimately working for yourself. Yes, you need the approval of a publisher and an audience, but what is valued in fiction writing - style, individual voice, insight - is scorned by the editor who is combing through your newspaper article.

It is simply much easier to infuse life, feeling, and higher truth into a novel than a non-fiction work, to find the license to write truth without being wedded to fact.

History - the non-fiction version - must inform the fiction to make it truthful; too much of it and your genres are colliding.

I am not trying to be young again. But I do feel the need to capture that energy in story form before it slips from my mind, to recount those adventures if not relive them.