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'm one of those unlucky people who had a happy childhood.

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

But I have always - ever since The Accidental Woman - written novels about individuals attempting to make choices in the context of situations over which they have no control.

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

Well, I like the rain before it falls.

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.