What I discovered is I don't like to repeat lead characters because one of the most pleasurable things in a book to me is learning about the lead.

For something that's supposed to be secret, there is a lot of intelligence history. Every time I read one book, two more are published.

In the 1930s, there were so many different conflicts going on between the British, the French, the Russians, the Germans, the Spaniards, the Romanians and so on.

I don't just want my books to be about the '30s and '40s. I want them to read as if they had been written then. I think of them as '40s novels, written in the conservative narrative past.

My politics of optimism and hope still casts its lot with the Democrats - in the optimistic hope that the dying embers of its status as the party of our better angels, one that took risks for social justice, can still be fanned into a flame. But I'm an old man, born in 1969.

You can't be a crazy rebel in the face of death, it's not a fitting attitude.

I have lots of memories of my father. He was an incredible father. We all loved him to death.

Grief is a very strange thing. It can affect you in all kinds of ways. I lost a year. I’ve done a lot of therapy and it’s great to be back on the horse.