First person that inspired you to become a story-teller? Be it teacher, grandmother, the radio.
Working-class kids didn’t have books in the early sixties and nobody told stories, except about the football. When I was about nineteen, Arthur Grimble’s A Pattern of Islands made me realise what travel writing could do – that it was the perfect vehicle in which to smuggle in the ineffable.
Is there a home? How many? Where do you write now?
Yes there is a Victorian butcher’s shop on Hampstead Heath that has been home for thirty years. I write wherever I am – it’s a wholly inaccessible luxury not to have to get on with it every single day. What would one tell the gas man?
Writer or travel-writer or adventurer ? How will booksellers describe you, when we want to carry on selling your books?
‘Writer’ is quite enough
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Read MoreLast New Year, I ripped up a book contract. It was an intriguing sensation to free yourself from the otherwise desired embrace of a Publisher. As all hungry freelance writers know, you need to lie about your availability and accept multiple and contradictory commissions with enthusiasm. Editors do not want to employ writers who say No.
So why did I do it? Guilt about broken deadlines was not a primary concern. Deadlines are a vital aspect of newsprint journalism, but if you are writing a book they are mere fences to be jumped, as if you were an old hunter at a point-to-point. But I did know we were going forward into one hell of a year at Eland, moving all 182 titles into a new warehouse and a new distributor. I may also have talked about my next book too much, which can kill the joy of settling down in a dark corner for three months. The story had already been told. I was also enjoying the comparative success of The House Divided: Sunni, Shia and the Making of the Middle East and the invitations to book festivals.
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