Andrew Had A Gift For Deepening The

It's Extremely Hard For Athletes To Accept What's Happened To Them Sometimes. It's Hard To Be Beaten By A Small Margin, And I've Spoken With Athletes Who, For Years Afterward, Have Been Tormented By The Knowledge That, Had They Done Something Ever So Slightly Different, They Could Have Been One-ten-thousandth Of A Second Quicker.

When I Reached Fort Binjemma, For Example, Where My Grandfather Was Stationed For A While, The Whole Victorian Fort Was Decaying. Barbed Wire Surrounded It, Spray Paint On The Ancient Walls Claimed It As Private Property, And The Moat Where My Grandfather And His Men Had Grown Crops - In Desperation As The Siege's Hunger Bit - Was Completely Overgrown With Bushes And Trees.

I Could Not Stop Talking Because Now I Had Started My Story, It Wanted To Be Finished. We Cannot Choose Where To Start And Stop. Our Stories Are The Tellers Of Us.

I Think, In Common With A Lot Of Novelists, I Wasn't The Most Athletic Guy At School.

[my Maternal Grandmother ] Was A Teacher In London And Elsewhere During The War, Although The Children She Taught Were Not The "lost Children" Who Feature In The Novel - Those Come From My Research.