Ah, Well, I Have No Talent For

I Was Going To Say 'my Friend Stuart', But I Suppose He's Not A Friend Any More. I Seem To Have Lost A Number Of Friends In The Last Few Years. I Don't Mean That I've Fallen Out With Them, In Any Dramatic Way. We've Just Decided Not To Stay In Touch. And That's What It's Been: A Decision, A Conscious Decision, Because It's Not Difficult To Stay In Touch With People Nowadays, There Are So Many Different Ways Of Doing It. But As You Get Older, I Think That Some Friendships Start To Feel Increasingly Redundant. You Just Find Yourself Asking, "what's The Point?" And Then You Stop.

I Have Two Ideas For Novels At The Moment, Neither Of Them All That Conventional, But I'm Not Ready To Choose Between Them Yet, Let Alone Settle Down To The Process Of Writing.

Revisionist Historians Are About To Get Their Hands On The Thatcher Years, Shes Probably Going To Be Looked At Again Because She Feels Far Enough Away Now, And We Dont See Her Much On The Political Landscape In This Country, Shes Kind Of Disappeared And She Doesnt Speak Out Much Anymore.

My Only Regret Is That I Signed Away The World Rights And In America They've Been Far And Away My Most Successful Books, But I Never Saw A Cent From Any Of It.

The Writer I Feel The Most Affinity With - You Said You Felt My Books Are 19th Century Novels, I Think They're 18th Century Novels - Is Fielding, Henry Fielding, He's The Guy Who Does It For Me.