Who was it recently invented some machine that will enable her to sign a book from 5,000 miles away? Margaret Atwood. Get off your arse, love, and sign it in person. Publishers and circumstance made you a bestselling author. Give a little back.

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

The short story feels like the most natural length for prose fiction, or certainly for the kind of ideas and situations I like to encounter.

I'm not trying to write cinematic novels, but I have been told several times that my style is cinematic.

There has been corruption in the Belgian civil service and at government level for decades. The Royal family do what they can to hold things together, and they don't do a bad job.

I never know exactly where I'm going with a story, whether it's a short story or a novel. If I did I'd soon grow bored of it. The fun, for me, is in the finding out and the making sense of it.

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.