I Would Have Been A

Write A Book You'd Like To Read. If You Wouldn't Read It, Why Would Anybody Else? Don't Write For A Perceived Audience Or Market. It May Well Have Vanished By The Time Your Book's Ready.

For Me, It Is About Using Everything That Is There And Using The Gaps In The Record, Figuring Out Why The Gaps Might Be There. And Then When You Move On To The Level Of What Historians Said, Laying The Interpretations Side By Side. You Also Have To Look Back At The Documents And Make Your Own Judgments. What The Record Says And What People Say About It. A Novelist Can Fill The Gaps In A Way That A Biographer Cannot.

If The Monarchy Were Removed Tomorrow, It Wouldn't Have A Huge Effect On The National Mind-set. The Monarchy Is Mildly Interesting And Largely Harmless. I Can't Find I Can Get Very Heated About It. In The Next Couple Of Generations, It Is Bound To Go. There Is So Much Else In The World That Is More Interesting.

Some Of These Things Are True And Some Of Them Lies. But They Are All Good Stories.

I Used To Think That When I Set Out That Doing The Research Was Enough! But Then The Gaps Would Emerge That Could Only Be Filled By The Imagination. And Imagination Only Comes When You Privilege The Subconscious, When You Make Delay And Procrastination Work For You.