Luckily, in my case, I have managed, by writing, to do the one thing that I always wanted to do.

So it was primarily a desire to write about that period in one's life rather than that period in history or in British culture or whatever.

I think it's also the case that I'm not as widely travelled, or as well-educated in history, as most of the other novelists I meet: so I have to write about my own country, at the present time, because it's more or less all I know about!

I'm shy of comparisons to Dickens because he's one of the absolute greats and it's silly to compare a contemporary novelist with someone.

So no, I'm pleased if it's been influential for many readers, but at the time I didn't even know that it was going to have any readers.

Also I had financial worries because it took four years to write and we were living off my wife's income all that time, which wasn't very great.

It's only a drawback in the States, where most people seem to have no real interest in other countries and the notion of a novel which might offer insight into life in the UK doesn't seem to appeal very widely.

They were written in the early '90s when I was strapped for cash.

I don't know, I don't really have a view about what my contemporaries are doing, except that I enjoy individual writers and so on.