Imagination Only Comes When You

My Concern Is Less The Monarchy As Such Than The Attempt Of A Fading Colonial Power To Hang Onto Grandeur.

I Spend A Lot Of My Time Talking To The Dead, But Since I Get Paid For It, No One Thinks I'm Mad.

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.

People Who Wrote Literary Novels About The Past Probably Didn't Want Them Pegged As Historical Fiction. Certainly That Was True In England.

I've Got So Many Ideas, And Sometimes The More Exhausted My Body Gets, The More Active My Mind Gets.