"Unlike the Holocaust, Stalin's murders are forgotten: dust blowing in the wind." — Robert Harris

You know, you can be really quite subversive in popular fiction, which is capable of taking on big issues of politics, war, the rise and fall of commercial dynasties.

Politics is never a victory, it's just the remorseless grinding forward of events.

I see myself as the literary equivalent of a skilled lathe-operator, or a basket-weaver; a potter, maybe: I make mildly diverting objects that people want to buy.

I think it's very, very hard not to go slightly crazy if you're in the top in politics - especially if you're there for a long time.