So I was smacked out on the Prime Minister's jet, big deal.

The writing life is essentially one of solitary confinement - if you can't deal with this, you needn't apply.

My novels tend to come about from a fusion of two big ideas, creating a critical mass that then fissions, throwing off hundreds of other particles, riffs, tropes and characters.

It is fair to say that insofar as sport is taken seriously by those who play it, then to that extent their conduct in play - their ability to deal with loss or victory, their ability to meld strategic thinking and brute force - can be taken as a small-scale model of how they, or others like them, might behave in life.

It has a big feel in a regional jet.

Whom does the prime minister prefer? Tinky Winkey, Dipsy, Po, or La-La?