I definitely do feel a pull toward people and places that are far from my own life.

Endings are never neat, because when life goes on, there is no end. You may want to speculate about what the characters get up to afterwards, but I feel it would be presumptuous of me to dictate that.

Because I work quite slowly, I have to keep myself interested over a long research and writing period. So I can't see myself writing about modern middle-class Londoners anytime soon.

I don't use real people for inspiration.

Gypsies are, to say the least, underrepresented in literature and film.

Whenever I pick up a book I think, "Tell me something I don't know."

I love research, and in fact it's liberating because you have to create your own world. No one can say "I've just got back from the 1860s, and you got it wrong." Anyway, it's fiction.