The construction industry likes nothing more than a blank canvas onto which they can impose a brand new building, because that way they can make more money.

I do make myself be interested in places in a way that I don't make myself be interested in people.

If you believe in the existence of fairies at the bottom of the garden you are deemed fit for the bin. If you believe in parthenogenesis, ascension, transubstantiation and all the rest of it you are deemed fit to govern the country.

When I started writing fiction it always seemed in retrospect (I didn't realise at the time) that it was always caused by environments rather than by incidents and characters.

For the most part, French cities are much better preserved and looked after than British cities, because the bourgeoisie, the people who run the cities, have always lived centrally, which has only recently begun to happen in big cities in England. Traditionally in England, people who had any money would live out in the suburbs. Now, increasingly, people with money live in the cities, but this has changed only in the last 20 or so years.

The construction industry likes nothing more than a blank canvas onto which they can impose a brand new building, because that way they can make more money.

Conversion requires a subtler mind. Architects don't like it, architects want to create their own landmark buildings so that people a few years hence will say, 'Oh, that building there is being knocked down, who did that one?'