My only regret is that I signed away the world rights and in America they've been far and away my most successful books, but I never saw a cent from any of it. |
Revisionist historians are about to get their hands on the Thatcher years, she's probably going to be looked at again because she feels far enough away now, and we don't see her much on the political landscape in this country, she's kind of disappeared and she doesn't speak out much anymore. |
So it was primarily a desire to write about that period in one's life rather than that period in history or in British culture or whatever. |
So no, I'm pleased if it's been influential for many readers, but at the time I didn't even know that it was going to have any readers. |
Someone emailed me and said The Closed Circle reminded them of reading Trollope. |
Thatcherism has become bigger than she ever was. |
The biggest markets for my books outside the UK are France and Italy, and those are the two countries where I also have the closest personal relationships with my translators - I don't know whether that's a coincidence, or if there's something to be learned from it. |
The fact that it was a TV sitcom rather than a literary novel is neither here nor there, as far as I'm concerned. |
The more melancholy side of my literary personality is much in tune with BS Johnson's. |
The writer I feel the most affinity with - you said you felt my books are 19th century novels, I think they're 18th century novels - is Fielding, Henry Fielding, he's the guy who does it for me. |
They were written in the early '90s when I was strapped for cash. |
Well, mainly it's because I'm not a writer who's comfortable with writing about periods that I can't remember firsthand. |
Writers never feel comfortable having labels attached to them, however accurate they are. |
You would go mad if you began to speculate about the impact your novel might have while you were still writing it. |