Does that land with you? Do you feel that you need to withdraw and be a hermit to be as prolific as you are?

I guess when I started to seriously consider becoming a writer when I was really young, I would read up about the lives of writers and seen them on TV.

So I always had this image in my mind of what they looked like.

Pipe smoking tweed jacket with a patch in the arms wearing.

That was my first image or impression of the author.

And of course, back in the day, it was always seen like almost at the point of caricature in TV and films and so on.

But I was too young to realize them or to see them as such.

Where did that wonderful and audacious idea come from? And what were you trying to say about Britain at that time? So