What the short story needs above all is for one of the big publishers to get an equivalent series up and running and to support it and promote it.

I always have lots of zany ideas for promotional stuff as publication nears.

What the short story needs above all is for one of the big publishers to get an equivalent series up and running and to support it and promote it.

I have no patience with up-themselves authors who complain about having to trail round a few bookshops signing stock.

The idea that a student can write a sonnet or a novel without having a sound understanding about its history, and where it fits into literature as a whole, seems to me to be manifestly daft.

I am interested in power and in the idea of one country exerting power over another. The Soviets took this to an extreme.

The Belgians tend to downplay the cultural divide issue, and the far-right issue, but there's a staggering degree of casual racism in Belgium, much worse than in the UK.