History unravels; circumstances, following their natural inclination, prefer to remain ravelled.

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'm writing another novel and I know what I'm going to do after, which may be something more like this again, maybe some strange mixture of fiction and non-fiction.

I'm now an agnostic but I grew up on the King James version, which I'm eternally grateful for.

Grief-stricken. Stricken is right; it is as though you had been felled. Knocked to the ground; pitched out of life and into something else.

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

Every novel generates its own climate, when you get going.