I have always believed that the material world is governed by nonmaterial sources, so that in that sense 'English Music' is an exercise in the spiritual as well as the material. I have always been attracted to the Gothic and spiritual imagination, and I've always been interested in visionaries.

I think biography can be more personal than fiction, and certainly can be more expressive.

The endless chatter of this journey had wearied me.

There is no humiliation worse than the consciousness of a wasted life. It stains the spirit, forestalls hope, and destroys any motive for action or change.

Yet, like the sea and the gallows, London refuses nobody.

As a Londoner I was able to see how the world of power and money cast its shadow on those who failed.

A triptych in which the presiding deities are Mother, England and Me.