The problems of the world are not going to be engaged with and solved in Faversham, they're going to be sorted out in cities like Birmingham.

I stopped being an engaged journalist and became a disengaged novelist.

The most I have to fear while hiking in Warwickshire and Worcestershire, the two historic British counties closest to my city home in Birmingham, is whether or not the mud awaiting me in the narrow lanes ahead is deep enough to foul my socks.

I want to live in a city where the future is being mapped out.

For all the splendours of the world's greatest galleries, visitors are likely to be kept at arm's length, spectators of a world that can seem too rarefied to let them in.

In the U.K., a lot of writers won't show up to support activist issues because they figure they're already repairing the world. I don't want to be one of those people.