Live an interesting life. Meet people. Read a lot and widely, learn from the great writers

We have bodies coming home and coffins covered in flags, not just in the UK but world-wide.

Read a lot - poems, prose, stories, newspapers, anything. Read books and poems that you think you will like and some that you think might not be for you. You might be surprised.

I could believe only in the hell I was living in, a hell on earth, and it was man-made, not God-made.

By the time I sit down and face the blank page I am raring to go. I tell it as if I'm talking to my best friend or one of my grandchildren.

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 write fiction. I make things up, it's what I do.