Nothing is long ago in an archive, my dear. In the records we treat the dead as same as the living. that’s the whole point of keeping papers. It doesn’t matter if it’s a hundred years or only a few weeks. It’s all filed away, fresh as the day it went under the covers.

An aunt is a safe haven for a child. Someone who will keep your secrets and is always on your side.

Molly Bloom is simply the most sensuous woman in literature.

My fascination with history is as much about the present as it is about the past.

It is one of the benchmarks of a culture I always think – the page at which it operates. A good way to measure it is to order a taxi and see how irate local people get if it is late.

For a novelist, the gaps in a story are as intriguing as material that still exists.

Can I fetch you something, madam? A cup of tea?’In the old days she’d have been ‘miss’ and he’d have offered her a cocktail.

During the war some of the country’s sharpest minds had looked as if they had been dragged through a hedge backwards.

One of Scotland’s most important cultural exports – stories.

Kissing her is like drinking salted water, he thinks. His thirst only increases.

I am a storyteller, not a historian, and it’s my ambition to create something compelling – something unputdownable and riveting – that chimes with the real history but is, in fact, fiction.

Everyone was important during the war. Everyone. We worked together and we won.

Covert operations relied on the unguarded slip, the unconscious choosing of one word over another.

I had never really understood what an adventure life could be, if you followed your heart and did what you really wanted to do, which is what we must all do in the end.

A chap’s impending death has a way of focusing the mind.

Occasionally a particular word or phrase in a letter or diary has sparked an entire plot – like an echo from history, still very alive.

I love stories that suck you in, that you can’t stop reading because you are quite simply there.

People who inspire such contradictory emotions must be worthwhile, I reasoned.

I have no problem in moving a date one way or another or coming up with a subplot that gets my characters in (or out) of a fix more rambunctiously than the extant records show.

If you’ve been hurt and you’ve grieved and you’ve been through the mill, it takes a long time to get over it.

It’s always been important for writers to be disciplined but now even more so. In addition to the traditional displacement activities like cleaning the fridge or eating cake writers are faced with a plethora of online possibilities (some of which may be professionally worthwhile as well as interesting and fun). As a writer it’s important...

In the 1950s at least less was expected of women. Now we’re supposed to build a career, build a home, be the supermum that every child deserves, the perfect wife, meet the demands of elderly parents, and still stay sane.

The sky was a sparkling succession of black diamonds on black velvet made crystal clear by the blackout.

If there’s one shade a woman of colour can’t wear it’s got to be the one everyone expects, hasn’t it?

Such a night cannot be shaken from a woman’s memory. Such a night changes your life forever.

At the end of the day, that’s what a family is – a group of different people who accept each other.

Copywriters, journalists, mainstream authors, ghostwriters, bloggers and advertising creatives have as much right to think of themselves as good writers as academics, poets, or literary novelists.

We might give her presents, tell some tales, but would she ever be able to really understand what the journey had been like for us?

As it stands there is a very strong argument that as the book trade becomes increasingly corporate it’s our literary heritage that is at risk – a vital part of our culture.

For a writer it’s a genuinely interesting and hopefully profitable era that makes a variety of books available to a variety of readers, extending both what’s available and who gets to read it.

I believe the era of the militant lady is back.

There’s nothing like a military man, even out of uniform.

If we don’t value the people who inspire us (and money is one mark of that) then what kind of culture are we building?

Sometimes you don’t even have to have sex at all, and for that kind of sicko, you charge double.

I am more one for the story, I think, than the action.

He often came back ‘all thinky’ from work.

I knew that I was talented. I was positive about that. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was talented at, but I was ambitious enough to wait it out and see what turned up.

I had loved poetry and the theatre. Now I loved adventure more.

Google maps are one thing but there’s no substitute for pounding the beat and I spent quite a bit of time figuring out how to break into the back of the houses on Belgrave Place. Once I even for followed by a suspicious householder – I’d been hanging around staring at the exterior of his...

The 1950s is a key decade in the 20th Century. Each year has a distinctive flavour.

I have a really vivid imagination and I find it difficult to read scenes of complete graphic violence. That’s not to say that graphic violence does not exist. It’s just that I find it quite harrowing and I much prefer if it isn’t completely outlined for me because my imagination can do that.

You couldn’t predict what was going to happen for one simple reason: people.

I know a lot of writers, and everyone works differently, but this is something that we truly have in common across all genres – the fiction has to be real inside your head.

The net has provided a level playing field for criticism and comment – anyone and everyone is entitled to their opinion – and that is one of its greatest strengths.

Being able to read well in public and talk about your work in an engaging fashion is part of most writers’ job specification.

I’ve found myself moved by letters and diaries in archives as well as trashy, summer blockbusters. It’s possible to make a connection with any kind of writing – as long as the writing is good.

As a historical novelist, there is very little I like more than spending time sorting through boxes of old letters, diaries, maps, trinkets, and baubles.

I find it inspiring to actively choose which traditions to celebrate and also come up with new ideas for traditions of my own.

Once you’re on the pleasure express, it’s hard to get off and switch to another, slower service.

Aunts offer kids an opportunity to try out ideas that don’t chime with their parents and they also demonstrate that people can get on, love each other and live together without necessarily being carbon copies.