I'm not claiming anything like sainthood - merely a native perception.

This strong sense of who I am that I've always had, since I was very young, is what makes me write.

It's interesting, the sense of pastoral utopia that exists in so much fantasy - in [Edward ] Dunsany, [John R.R.] Tolkien and so on.

I feel a little as if the Buddhism is creeping back, but I mention all this simply in order to illustrate that there is, in my life, a fundamental sense of conflict between something that I am calling 'Buddhism' and my creative impulse.

People often refer to a creative ability as a 'gift', and, of course, it is, in that, if I had sat down and logically tried to work out who I was and what I should do, I would never have come up with the idea of writing. It was already there, gratis, a given - a gift.

I think I still have [commemorative coin ] somewhere. Why was this given to me? I think every child in the country must have received one [ from Queen's Silver Jubilee]. That's the last time that I recall something of an innocent, more-or-less unquestioning monarchist patriotism in Britain.

I was born in the seventies, age of bad haircuts and grainy colour photos.