Every Novel Generates Its Own Climate, When

I Can Walk About London And See A Society That Seems An Absolutely Revolutionary Change From The 1950s, That Seems Completely And Utterly Different, And Then I Can Pick Up On Something Where You Suddenly See That It's Not.

We Open Our Mouths And Out Flow Words Whose Ancestries We Do Not Even Know. We Are Walking Lexicons. In A Single Sentence Of Idle Chatter We Preserve Latin, Anglo-saxon, Norse: We Carry A Museum Inside Our Heads, Each Day We Commemorate Peoples Of Whom We Have Never Heard.

I'm Not A Historian But I Can Get Interested - Obsessively Interested - With Any Aspect Of The Past, Whether It's Palaeontology Or Archaeology Or The Very Recent Past.

If People Don't Read, That's Their Choice; A Lifelong Book Habit May Itself Be Some Sort Of Affliction.

There's A Fearful Term That's In Fashion At The Moment - Closure. People Apparently Believe It Is Desirable And Attainable.