I continued writing the bad plays which fortunately nobody would produce, just as no one did me the unkindness of publishing my early novels.

Probably induced by the asthma, I started reading and writing early on, my literary efforts from the age of about nine running chiefly to poetry and plays.

I developed the habit of writing novels behind a closed door, or at my uncle's, on the dining table.

As it is I'm a dated novelist, whom hardly anybody reads, or if they do, most of them don't understand what I am on about. Certainly I wish I had never written Voss, which is going to be everybody's albatross.

In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.

Superficially my war was a comfortable exercise in futility carried out in a grand Scottish hotel amongst the bridge players and swillers of easy-come-by whisky. My chest got me out of active service and into guilt, as I wrote two, or is it three of the novels for which I am now acclaimed.