If we had not met, that day, I think I would have imagined you somehow.

I didn't want it to be a book that made pronouncements.

The Photograph is concerned with the power that the past has to interfere with the present: the time bomb in the cupboard.

Mythology is much better stuff than history. It has form; logic; a message.

In old age, you realise that while you're divided from your youth by decades, you can close your eyes and summon it at will. As a writer it puts one at a distinct advantage.

Equally, we require a collective past - hence the endless reinterpretations of history, frequently to suit the perceptions of the present.

The pleasure of writing fiction is that you are always spotting some new approach, an alternative way of telling a story and manipulating characters; the novel is such a wonderfully flexible form.