You aren't a hero and I'm not beautiful and we probably won't live happily ever after " she said. "But we're alive and together and we're going to be all right.

I was fascinated by The Lord of the Rings from about the age of eight and that lasted well into my teens.

As a child I always steered clear of science fiction, but in the autumn of 1977 the bow-wave of publicity for the first Star Wars movie had already reached me, so I was eager for anything science-fictional.

An Engineer is no match for a Historian with his dander up!

It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.

That's the trouble with a story spinner. You never know what's real and what's made up. Even when they are telling the truth, they can't stop themselves from spinning it into something better; something prettier, with more of a pattern to it.

But boys will be boys, even the ones who are only girls dressed up: That's one of the rules of the world.