You Learn A Lot, Writing Fiction.

The Idea That Memory Is Linear Is Nonsense. What We Have In Our Heads Is A Collection Of Frames. As To Time Itself-can It Be Linear When All These Snatches Of Other Presents Exist At Once In Your Mind? A Very Elusive And Tricky Concept, Time.

All History, Of Course, Is The History Of Wars.

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.

People Die, But Money Never Does.

I Have Long Been Interested In Landscape History, And When Younger And More Robust I Used To Do Much Tramping Of The English Landscape In Search Of Ancient Field Systems, Drove Roads, Indications Of Prehistoric Settlement. Towns And Cities, Too, Which Always Retain The Ghost Of Their Earlier Incarnations Beneath Today's Concrete And Glass.