I can walk about London and see a society that seems an absolutely revolutionary change from the 1950s, that seems completely and utterly different, and then I can pick up on something where you suddenly see that it's not.

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

There's a preoccupation with memory and the operation of memory and a rather rapacious interest in history.

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

Getting to know someone else involves curiosity about where they have come from, who they are.

I have had to empty two family homes during the last few years - first, the house that had been my grandmothers since 1923, and then my own country home, which we had lived in for over twenty years.

I didn't write anything until I was well over 30.