But we're alive, and together, and we're going to be all right.

The one thing worse than an enemy is a friend turned false.

Even tiny children looking at a picture book are using their imaginations, gleaning clues from the images to understand what is happening, and perhaps using the throwaway details which the illustrator includes to add their own elements to the story.

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

I still feel, as I did when I was six or seven, that books are simply the best way to experience a story.

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.

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