Fashion is in my blood. Growing up, I was always clacking around the house in my mother's shoes.

I think the sexiest thing on anybody is intelligence. I respect somebody who has a brain and wants to use it more than a pretty face and status.

Your body tells you what it needs, and if you sleep past your alarm on a Saturday morning, it's probably because you need the sleep.

You know, my parents have always been incredibly supportive. I'm an only child, so we're very close. There's just the three of us. They're exceptional parents but also great friends. My father was able to take his hobby, photography, and turn it into a beautiful career. So when they saw how much I loved acting, they were 100 percent behind me.

Throughout my career, in cricket and beyond, I've been incredibly lucky with my marriage. I met Rachael in 2002, and that was the year my England career kicked on. Everything started to click.

I loved a lot of the romantic composers.

I am a lover of all sorts of different music. I love blues and every piece of music that I have listened to has become an influence.

For commercial books in a genre, readers' and editors' expectations may be fairly rigid. Some romance lines, for instance, issue fairly detailed writers' guidelines explaining exactly what must happen in a book they publish (and what must not).