A Novel Should Be A Book Of

[margaret Thatcher] Was Always Talking About What The Prudent Housewife Should Do And What The Prudent Housewife Knew.

To My Astonishment, When Wolf Hall Came Out, People Asked If I Made It Up - [thomas More] Burning Of Heretics. It Was Well Documented. And He Was Proud Of It! The Brits Love Lost Causes.

When I Came To Write My Thomas Cromwell Books, I Moved Onto The Center Ground Of English History, But I Was Never There Before. I Didn't Feel It Was My History Particularly, Coming From Northern Britain, Being Of Irish Extraction, Being A Cradle Catholic. The Image Of England I Grew Up With Felt Somewhere Else. There Was An Official England In Postcards, But It Wasn't One I Had Visited. But I Decided To March Onto The Center Ground And Occupy It Whether It Was Mine Or Not.

Fiction Leaves Us So Much Work To Do, Allows The Individual So Much Input; You Have To See, You Have To Hear, You Have To Taste The Madeleine, And While You Are Seemingly Passive In Your Chair, You Have To Travel.

What [margaret Thatcher] Made A Play For Was The Acquisitive: Our Greedy Nature. She Set Aside Other Things Like An Identification With Community, Altruism. The Only Collective That She Understood Was: Rally Around And Slay The Enemy.