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" I didn't belong to the sort of family where the children's classics were laid on. I went to the public library and read everything I could get my hands on. "

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" Being a writer is a poverty trap. I mean, it's a terrible profession. "

" What I hate in fiction is when the author knows better than the characters what they should do. "

" 'Undertones of War' by Edmund Blunden seems to get less attention than the memoirs of Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves, but it is a great book. "

" That balance between involvement and detachment is what novelists do. It's the ideal relationship between a novelist and a character, I think, total involvement and identity and empathy, stopping short of being autobiographical - in my case, anyway - but also quite detached. "

" When I'm writing the first draft, I'm writing in a very slovenly way: anything to get the outline of the story on paper. "

" Culturally, the First World War is the war that stands in for other wars. "

" I wanted to be a novelist from a very early age - 11 or 12 - but I don't think I ever thought I would write historical fiction. I never thought I might write academic history because I simply wasn't good enough! "

" My grandmother's first husband was a spiritualist medium. What fascinates me about that is the balance between conviction and sincerity and trickery, which is also something that novelists are very familiar with. "

" When writing about historical characters I try to be as accurate as possible, and in particular not to misrepresent the view they held. With a real historical figure you have to be fair, and this is not an obligation you have in dealing with your own creations, so it is quite different. "

" Fiction should be about moral dilemmas that are so bloody difficult that the author doesn't know the answer. "