History at its best is a gritty, dirty business.

A word out of place or an interesting choice of vocabulary can spawn a whole character.

Copywriters, journalists, mainstream authors, ghostwriters, bloggers and advertising creatives have as much right to think of themselves as good writers as academics, poets, or literary novelists.

Writing about the 1950s has given me tremendous respect for my mother's generation.

History is full of blank spaces, but good stories, invariably, are not.

Sometimes I create a character from a scrap - a mere mention that has been left behind.

There is something particularly fascinating about seeing places you know in a piece of art - be that in a film, or a photograph or painting.