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

You have this comet trail of your own lived life, sparks from which arrive in the head all the time, whether you want them or not - life has been lived but it is still all going on, in the mind for better and for worse.

Born in Jerusalem, Wadie Said went from being a dragoman to a salesman in the United States and thence to a hugely successful businessman in Egypt.

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

I'm not an historian and I'm not wanting to write about how I perceive the social change over the century as a historian, but as somebody who's walked through it and whose life has been dictated by it too, as all our lives are.

It seems to me that anyone whose library consists of a Kindle lying on a table is some sort of bloodless nerd.

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