It may take a village to raise a baby, but hell! it takes an army to produce a book.

When the first book out my sister-in-law read it and we were chatting at 5 o'clock in the afternoon and she said, "Oh my God, chapter six, sex and a murder," and her five year old wandered into the kitchen and said, "Sixty hamburgers?

He often came back ‘all thinky’ from work.

Everyone assumes writers spend their time lounging around, writing and occasionally striking a pose whilst having a think.

A chap’s impending death has a way of focusing the mind.


The good thing about the aristocracy – German or English – was that they were easily traced, Mirabelle thought.

The devil was always in the detail. And here the detail was certainly devilish.

He finds himself bored by the shenanigans of highly spirited young men. Their concerns reside somewhere between balder and dash.

It is one of the benchmarks of a culture I always think – the page at which it operates. A good way to measure it is to order a taxi and see how irate local people get if it is late.