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.

An artist's concern is to capture beauty wherever he finds it.

I wouldn't want to try to adapt something of my own. It would be like going back to school and doing all my exams again.

Now when I look back to the Guildford of that time it seems far more exotic to me than Nagasaki.

So why not become a mongrel? It's healthy

I can't even say I made my own mistakes. Really - one has to ask oneself - what dignity is there in that?

People were incredibly kind to our family and went out of their way to help.