People who have had a stroke and are recovering from it love being read to... especially by someone who is a good reader - it does help them to get better.

Both my parents had strokes. My father had several, but the last one was fatal. It's a horribly disabling bug, a stroke.

My favourite book - 'The Good Soldier' by Ford Madox Ford, which I have read about 20 times - is different from my favourite author, who is Iris Murdoch. I find her books exciting and unputdownable. Her characters are so carefully studied and in-depth; I love that.

I have an idea, and I have a perpetrator, and I write the book along those lines, and when I get to the last chapter, I change the perpetrator so that if I can deceive myself, I can deceive the reader.

There are some novelists who can get away with writing about sex - Philip Roth, Ian McEwan - but they are rare.

People are still being put into geriatric wards when they don't need it. They need treatment, not just being put into bed and fed.