Kane and Abel

again the problem.

If you write Cain and Abel, if you write Adam and Eve, you realise the reader goes, this can't be casual.

And so the answer to your question is, the first thing I did was to take it to my publisher three years before.

And my editor, Kate Elton, said, don't tell anyone.

So would I. I expected... three in the last five years, never has been a novel called Adam and Eve.

So Kate emphasized, do not tell anyone the title.

Same thing happened with Cain and Abel 47 years ago, but in a very different situation.

There was no way of checking in those days.

What do you think?

And he didn't stop there, and then he dropped Kane and Abel in 1979.

Two men born on the exact same day on opposite sides of the world, destined to cross paths and emotionally dismantle each other.

It's a masterclass in the psychology of pride.

[laughs]

Who knows? Whereas in fact, as you kindly pointed out, well, actually it was Cain and Abel that changed my life because that-

That one came after, yeah

...that sold a million copies-

It had never crossed my mind to do that.

And in fact, one must remember, John, uh, the first book only sold 3,000 copies.

Uh, the breakthrough didn't come until Cain and Abel.

I was in debt for seven years.

She'd arranged all that, and I didn't...

Of course, I didn't realize it until years later when, uh, she used to come up to London, and this was after Kane and Abel.

She'd stay at the Savoy Hotel in the Riverside Suite, and have a driver take her from Paddington to the Savoy, and from the Savoy to Paddington.

She would then go to Harrods and have a heyday, and then she would go home.

So she was a writer, but she would loved to have written a novel.

She told me again and again.

I'm happy to say she lived to see Kane and Abel, so she saw.

And as a little boy, what, before you go to, you know, before you're a teenager, what sort of little boy are you? What, what are the games you like playing?

What he did was he put into his books stories you couldn't put down.

People turned the pages.

That's why he's been one of the most successful novelists of our time.

A bestseller fifty years ago and a bestseller this week.

He took his experience of being a, a poor investment and having to leave Parliament to write his first novel, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less.