So when you step back from all of it, are there ideas or obsessions that become unmistakably, what should we call them, Stokerian?

Absolutely.

And it's interesting what you say about reading cross-biography, because one of the things I think I've tried to do as a biographer is to examine both the writer and his work and interface both of them with a view to illuminating both.

To answer your question, yes, there are definitely Stokerian themes and motifs that recur right across Stoker.

Some of them are fairly...

Benign, shall we say.

For example, his work is full of the rescue team.

How important was Ireland to this imagination of Bram Stoker's that we've been talking about?