It had never occurred to me that our lives, which had been so closely interwoven, could unravel with such speed.

As I say, I have never in all these years thought of the matter in quite this way; but then it is perhaps in the nature of coming away on a trip such as this that one is prompted towards such surprising new perspectives on topics one imagined one had long ago thought throughly.

Our family arrived in England in 1960. At that time I thought the war was ancient history. But if I think of 15 years ago from now, thats 1990, and that seems like yesterday to me.

Your life must now run the course that's been set for it.

The Booker triumph of Graham Swift's moving, effortlessly profound Last Orders is a vindication of the quiet, much-misunderstood path this fine writer chose to take after the brilliance of Waterland more than ten years ago.

So why not become a mongrel? It's healthy

There comes a point when you can more or less count the number of books you're going to write before you die.