There are as many different kinds of books as there are writers – as many different responses as there are readers.

It’s not until you’re older that you realise how important the things that happened to you when you were a kid are. Even things you only half remember.

This is the cusp of an age at least as exciting and as brimful of potential as the early days of the printing press.

I’m accustomed to reading Georgian and Victorian letters and sometimes you simply know in your gut that a blithe sentence is covering up a deeper emotion.

I care about a lot of issues. I care about libraries, I care about healthcare, I care about homelessness and unemployment. I care about net neutrality and the steady erosion of our liberties both online...

The friendship between officers is tarnished by the need for one or another to be promoted. The kindness of a captain is predicated on the obedience and efficiency of his underlings.

You can’t trust anyone you have to pay, and really, they can’t trust you.

There were so many wrongs piling up on both sides, so much of the past being dragged into the present, that living there was like carving the story of your life on to a sepulchral...

Scotland consistently produces world-class writers.

When a chap is passionate, the readership can sense it.

Parisians were not easy to engage in conversation. Perhaps that was why the Resistance had been so successful.

Britain wouldn’t have won the war without its eccentric geniuses.

Didn’t young people care what the generation before them had achieved? And if not, why had everyone gone through those grim difficult wartime years?

I hope that, whatever happens within the publishing industry, because of the increased control writers have of their own careers, better sales information and the advent of the internet, that ultimately this change in our...

I’m a novelist by trade and my job is to write a story rather than reconstruct actual events.

They march into the future to the rhythm of the past.

This investigation felt difficult, like driving in fog.

It may take a village to raise a baby, but hell! it takes an army to produce a book.

Being a writer is a more difficult job than people imagine.

It was so difficult to dress appropriately when the seasons changed – the British weather was the nothing if not erratic. Spring was the worst – freezing in Brighton this morning and then practically tropical...

Research material can turn up anywhere – in a dusty old letter in an archive, a journal or some old photographs you find in a charity shop.

Like good reading skills, good writing skills require immersion and imaginative engagement.

Most fellas like the races, though, Miss. It’s only human nature

You spill a lot of beans in historical fiction. Crime fiction is about spilling no beans at all. You spill the least beans you possibly can. So because I had already written historical fiction before...

The curve of my waist in a tight fitting summer dress can really make me new friends.

Everyone assumes writers spend their time lounging around, writing and occasionally striking a pose whilst having a think.

I’m in my 40s and I’m constantly surprised by how much my childhood still plays a part in my life.

As a historical novelist, there are few jobs more retrospective.

While I’m frustrated at the amount I’m expected to take on in the present, the 1950s woman was frustrated by being excluded – not being allowed to take things on at all.

I’m drawn to the 1950s for lots of reasons – everything from the fashion to the increasing sense of freedom and modernity that builds throughout the decade.

If peace came it would have to do so when there had been time to allow the hatred to grow out of people’s thinking.

I didn’t want to give up my job and join the ranks of the Doing Fuck All brigade no matter how much money I had in the bank.

Without archives many stories of real people would be lost, and along with those stories, vital clues that allow us to reflect and interpret our lives today.

Many existing top 20 Scottish writers have flourished in part because of good turns done by institutions, arts community, libraries and bookshops.

I love writing, and just as much, I love undertaking research.

Reticence was clearly a national characteristic, even if the other person spoke French.

You’ve got to make an effort to get the details right, because even through someone picks it up and knows it’s a novel, they know someone’s made it up and they know it’s not real,...

The mass communications that could enable our politics for good have instead turned it into a bland conglomeration of stinted opinion cloaked in the occasional media frenzy of blame or denial.

Our business is communication oftentimes through the medium of stories but our capacity has a far greater scope – to entertain certainly, but also to stimulate debate, to mark up changes and differences and that...

Writers of novels live in a strange world where what’s made up is as important as what’s real.

You have no future when the past rules you.

Mirabelle was always an enigma, and he had the sense that if he pushed her, she’d bolt.

It’s entirely possible to base an entire book on a long-forgotten letter.

I remember calling the council’s cemetery department to ask about body decomposition in different soil types. Once they had verified that I was a novelist and not a sicko, they were extremely helpful.

The atmosphere felt unexpectedly intense and the music was frantic. The beat made it both difficult to think straight and pleasant to move – like swimming almost.

As a reader you recognise that feeling when you’re lost in a book? You know the one – when whatever’s going on around you seems less real than what you’re reading and all you want...

Kindness was too painful. It had been a long time since he had had to endure it.

Archive material is vital to the writer of historical fiction.

I didn’t expect to love being online as much as I do. I’ve met some wonderful people and discovered that however arcane some of my interests that there are people out there who are interested...

Writing is such a solitary occupation that it takes a long time to build up a group of professional peers with whom you genuinely identify.