Completing A Book, It's A Little Like

The World Of Spying Is My Genre. My Struggle Is To Demystify, To De-romanticise The Spook World, But At The Same Time Harness It As A Good Story.

I Grew Up In A Completely Bookless Household. It Was My Father's Boast That He Had Never Read A Book From End To End. I Don't Remember Any Of His Ladies Being Bookish. So I Was Entirely Dependent On My Schoolteachers For My Early Reading With The Exception Of The Wind In The Willows, Which A Stepmother Read To Me When I Was In Hospital.

Unfortunately It Is The Weak Who Destroy The Strong.

When The World Is Destroyed, It Will Be Destroyed Not By Its Madmen But By The Sanity Of Its Experts And The Superior Ignorance Of Its Bureaucrats.

I Think That Most Of My Books Are Part Of Some Process Of Self-education, Often About The Places I Go To. Most Of All, They Are About The Peculiar Tension Between Institutional Loyalty And Loyalty To Oneself; The Mystery Of Patriotism, For A Brit Of My Age And Generation, Where It Runs, How It Should Be Defined, What It's Worth And What A Corrupting Force It Can Be When Misapplied. All That Stuff Is Just In Me And It Comes Out In The Characters. I Don't Mean To Preach, But I Know I Do, And I'm A Very Flawed Person. It's Quite Ridiculous.