The more melancholy side of my literary personality is much in tune with BS Johnson's.

The writer I feel the most affinity with - you said you felt my books are 19th century novels, I think they're 18th century novels - is Fielding, Henry Fielding, he's the guy who does it for me.

It seems to me that you would have to write a novel on a very small, intimate scale for it not to become political.

I like the idea of a big caesura between the narratives, a space which readers can fill in with their own speculative history.

My only regret is that I signed away the world rights and in America they've been far and away my most successful books, but I never saw a cent from any of it.

Ah, well, I have no talent for nonfiction, that's my problem.

The biggest markets for my books outside the UK are France and Italy, and those are the two countries where I also have the closest personal relationships with my translators - I don't know whether that's a coincidence, or if there's something to be learned from it.