Yet, Like The Sea And The Gallows,

Why Should A Novelist Not Also Be A Historian? To Force Unnatural Divisions Within The English Language Is To Work Against Its Capacious And Accommodating Nature. To Expect A Writer To Produce Only Novels, Or Only Histories, Is Equivalent To Demanding From A Composer That He Or She Write Only String Quartets Or Piano Sonatas.

I Just Wanted To Be An Ordinary, Middle-class Person. When I Was At Cambridge I Made Great Efforts To Lose The Last Remnants Of My Cockney Accent.

I Have Always Believed That The Material World Is Governed By Nonmaterial Sources, So That In That Sense 'english Music' Is An Exercise In The Spiritual As Well As The Material. I Have Always Been Attracted To The Gothic And Spiritual Imagination, And I've Always Been Interested In Visionaries.

The World Is A Sea In Which We All Must Surely Drown.

I Enjoyed Reading And Learning At School, And At University I Enjoyed Extending My Reading And Learning. Once I Left Cambridge, I Went To Yale As A Fellow. I Spent Two Years There. After That, George Gale Made Me Literary Editor Of 'the Spectator.