Change occurs slowly. Very often a legal change might take place but the cultural shift required to really accept its spirit lingers in the wings for decades.

I've found myself moved by letters and diaries in archives as well as trashy, summer blockbusters. It's possible to make a connection with any kind of writing - as long as the writing is good.

Aunts offer kids an opportunity to try out ideas that don't chime with their parents and they also demonstrate that people can get on, love each other and live together without necessarily being carbon copies.

The law don't like jazz clubs. No one wants anything to do with that kind of trouble.

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.

Scotland just isn't terribly Tory.

Very often the characters people respond to best have little parts of reality they can relate to.