1977 was also, of course, the year that Derek Jarman made his iconoclastic film Jubilee, which was so much part of the punk movement.

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

On the other hand, the seventies were drab. That is, I am utterly fascinated by the fifties and sixties.

I've never been baptised.

I would say that, apart from being a writer, I have also always been very conscious of the idea of a 'world elsewhere'.

What I find difficult about Buddhism, though it is also one of its significant fascinations, is the focus on what is immediately and physically present. To me, this seems a denial of the imagination, and the imagination is very important to me.

People may wish to say that the thing that is in conflict with my creativity is not Buddhism - that's fine.