We open our mouths and out flow words whose ancestries we do not even know. We are walking lexicons. In a single sentence of idle chatter we preserve Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse: we carry a museum inside our heads, each day we commemorate peoples of whom we have never heard.

But who knows their own child? You know bits - certain predictable reactions, a handful of familiar qualities. The rest is impenetrable. And quite right too. You give birth to them. You do not design them.

I do like to embed a fictional character firmly in an occupation.

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

Wars are fought by children. Conceived by their mad demonic elders, and fought by boys.

You learn a lot, writing fiction.

All history, of course, is the history of wars.