We make choices but are constantly foiled by happenstance.

There's a fearful term that's in fashion at the moment - closure. People apparently believe it is desirable and attainable.

I'm not a historian but I can get interested - obsessively interested - with any aspect of the past, whether it's palaeontology or archaeology or the very recent past.

I am addicted to arrivals, to those innocent dawn moments from which history accelerates.

I rather like getting away from fiction.

We all need a past - that's where our sense of identity comes from.

All I know for certain is that reading is of the most intense importance to me; if I were not able to read, to revisit old favorites and experiment with names new to me, I would be starved - probably too starved to go on writing myself.