As I said, I had no publisher for What a Carve Up! while I was writing it, so all we had to live off was my wife's money and little bits I was picking up for journalism.

I like the rain before it falls. of course there is no such thing, she said. That's why it's my favorite. Something can still make you happy, can't it, even if it isn't real.

The plain fact is that she never really liked me, and never wanted me. I had been a mistake; and that, to some extent, is what I remain in my own eyes, to this day. The knowledge never goes, can never be undone. You just have to find a way to live with it.

As soon as you start writing about how human beings interact with each other socially, you're into politics, aren't you?

Thatcherism has become bigger than she ever was.

I was mainly in a state of nervousness while I wrote it - nervousness that it was far bigger and more complicated than anything Id attempted before, and that maybe my talent just wasnt up to it and the book would have to be abandoned, or would turn out not to work at all when it was finished.

Contemporary Britain seems an endlessly fascinating place to me - but if I knew a little bit more about other places, and other times, maybe it wouldn't.