And for novelists, what's your kind of your advice for them of who owns the right?

Well, for me personally, because I write in that space, it's been really interesting as someone with dual heritage, because I was born and grew up in Britain, but then I lived in India for a decade, and that was when I first came into contact with that history.

I knew nothing about it until the age of 23.

Yeah.

And now I've found lots and lots of sources that go beyond the original sources that I would look at, which is middle-aged white historians.

Nothing wrong with that.

Lots of the books that I read for research are written by middle-aged white historians.

anything you're working on at the moment?

I don't know how it is for you.

Well, I mean, you've heard of the five stages of grief, right? Or, or whatever they are.

Uh, five...

I mean, it's, it's something similar to that, right? Of course, there's denial, especially when you're a younger writer and you think that you're the greatest thing since Hemingway, and you can't believe that these, these, these foolish agents have, have turned down your greatness.

Um, and then you sort of, sort of go through the, the other phases, which are, from what they all are now, bargaining and wanting to punch someone in the face.

I'm sure that's a, that's a proper phase.

Um, but you go through all of that, and then you gradually get to the point where you say to yourself, "Okay, fine.

What is there that's more relevant for whatever you're working on? I'm talking are there Post-it notes? Is, uh, plot points? Is there a whiteboard floating around?

I mean, it, it catches you from page one.

I've always loved small-town England, right? And this is a medieval market town, the kind that we're really, really familiar with, but the kind that's also going through all sorts of changes now.

So it's, it's also a state-of-the-nation novel in that sense, and we're in the company of a man that we think we know because he's an iconic global character.

But he's got no backstory, so I was allowed to give him that backstory, which includes the fact that he comes back to this small town and discovers that the person, the police officer who's put this case to bed, which he's now trying to unravel, happens to be the lady that he practically jilted at the altar 30 years earlier.

[laughs]

-over the last year since the book was published, and to be honest, they're all lovely, and they all bring something.

They're always telling me some trivia or some detail that I've got to include in the next one, like, you know, Daniel Craig wore 85 suits for a single scene in one of the films that he was in.

I have no idea what he was doing to these suits, but, uh, you know, it's the amazing things like that.

go back to my parents.

So I did a panel.

I was in conversation with Ajay Chowdhury and Joe Allahan, two brilliant writers.

The title of the panel was How Worried Should We Be About A Lie? I christened it again as Skynet has taken over and we are all screwed.

Is that your genuine thought on AI? Is AI a big problem for us? No, I think we have to be balanced about this.

Artificial intelligence is going to change the world, is changing the world.

It will change every single facet of our lives, whether it's our health, whether it's defense and security, whether it's our day-to-day interactions with other people.

Yeah, there's that side to it, but what about the side that is the danger for writers, or do you not think there's a danger for writers from AI?

Well, let's hear a little of the book, and this is when, uh, uh, Q gets the bad news about his job.

Yeah, so this is right at the beginning of the book.

Um, Q is contemplating, um, the time that he's had outside of MI6.

"How long had it been? Time had all but become a blur.

Three months? Three months since the new M, in post less than a year, had called him into her office to deliver the coup de grâce.

No surprise retirement party, no teary speeches, no glass of Lithuanian Shiraz pressed into his hands by the office temp together with a humorous leaving card featuring an old man with trousers at half-mast.

'Times are tight, Q.

So tell us about how you imagined Q's youth and his life so far.