Branson ate his salad, and left the rest of his fish untouched, while Grace tucked into his steak and kidney pudding with relish. 'I read a while ago,' he told Branson, 'that the French drink more red wine than the English but live longer. The Japanese eat more fish than the English but drink less wine and live longer. The Germans eat more red meat than the English, and drink more beer and they live longer too. You know the moral of this story? 'No' 'It's not what you eat or drink - it's speaking English that kills you.

...I don't have concrete plans for the future. I just think of success and keep a successful attitude. Success is 99 percent preparation. If you set yourself up for winning, rarely will you fail.

The crime genre's always been regarded very well by the literary end of the book world, whereas horror, although it had that spell in the late eighties, by and large, it's sort of ghetto-ized, and considered to be exploited literature.

My day starts with Radio 4's Today live or 'listen again' wherever I am in the world, thanks to digital radio - I even have an app on my iPhone that receives it.

Brighton has two universities. It's got a massive young, middle-class community, and the largest gay community in the UK. The result of which is a huge recreational drug market. It's the favoured place to live in the UK for first division criminals.

There are an awful lot of readers who won't pick up a book if they think it's got anything horrific in it, or paranormal or whatever.

I like dogs. Dogs don't judge people.