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.

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.

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

I wasn't thinking of a sequel when I finished 'Life Class.' What changed my mind was the perception that the characters had a lot of life left in them, a lot of unresolved conflicts, and also I became interested in the Tonks pastel portraits of facially disfigured soldiers and in the whole area of facial reconstruction.

The root of the kingdom is in the state. The root of the state is in the family. The root of the family is in the person of its head.

As I don't know what life would be like without my Chaplin connections, I work with them. I'm just really happy it's a family I can be proud of; it's not as if I'm related to some Z-list celebrity.

I wanted to build a family very strongly because I lost my family when I was 15, 14, and I missed the family unit very much.

Family holidays and weekends are really brightly colored memories, full of my mother and father, rather than our nannies and au pairs.