Politicians often like to suggest that their policies come about through objective thinking, but if you look at British fascists, for example, what you see - what I see - is a group of people coming to the decisions they came to because something happened to them when they were nine-years-old, or because of some deep prejudice that formed in them subsequent to that.

I never really have blank page syndrome. I don't get blocked. I have a plan for my novel before I start which, although incomplete, probably contains enough material for several novels by a quieter kind of writer. And I try to get my arms around that material and see where it takes me.

It seems to me that the basic plot of all historical novels is a romance swept aside by history.

I guess the main thing I definitely don't enjoy is having a job which involves selling things. You become an author because you think you're good at writing. Not because you love to promote yourself. I enjoy some of it and I've had a really fun few years so basically I have nothing to complain about. But what I don't like is the thought that it's going to go on for the rest of my life.

Plot is tremendously important to me: I can't stand books where nothing happens, and I can't imagine ever writing a novel without at least one murder.

The reason I start a novel is because there's something that excites me and I want to explore it.

I was always determined that one way or another I would force a book on the world, even if I had to resort to writing one about a tabby cat who solves mysteries.