We all know that the great memories of our childhood are the little triumphs - it doesn't really matter whether that was in writing, art, on the hockey field or on the football field. It's something that makes you feel - 'I can do this stuff'.

I fill up the well of stories in my head - without ever knowing I'm doing it.

I think people are more in contact now with the consequences of war than they've been for a very long time. And that's what amazes me when sometimes politicians seem to forget their history. They don't look and re-learn about what has happened before. Maybe they haven't got the memory, maybe they're already too young, but you can see how we become puffed up, and how we as a nation rise so quickly if we're not careful.

Animals are sentient, intelligent, perceptive, funny and entertaining. We owe them a duty of care as we do to children.

Being his real brother I could feel I live in his shadows, but I never have and I do not now. I live in his glow.

A notion for a story is for me a confluence of real events, historical perhaps, or from my own memory to create an exciting fusion.

I spend months, sometimes years, doing what I call dreamtime, weaving it together inside my head. But when I actually feel that the egg of my story is ready to hatch, then I can write it in three months. Then I know the landscape and the people well and from the inside, but I don't necessarily know where the story is going to take us.