A very happy New Year to you and all you know, from 4th Estate. 2014 was a fantastic year for books, wasn’t it? Or, to borrow the phrase from Andy Miller, it truly was The Year of Reading Dangerously. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie taught us that We Should All be Feminists, while Lena Dunham told us how she came to be one in Not That Kind of Girl. David Cronenberg put us off our dinner with the fantastic techno-thriller Consumed, but Anna Jones set us back on track with her astonishing debut recipe book A Modern Way to Eat. The phenomenal Sali Hughes taught us all we needed to know about beauty (and all we didn’t know we should) in Pretty Honest: The Straight-Talking Beauty Companion, a guide we should all start referring to daily in the new year. Read more…
You’re well known to booklovers already for your brilliant history writing – what made you want to take the leap into fiction?
The great thing about writing fiction is that you can just go for it – you don’t need to worry about the libel lawyers or the expectations of good taste demanded by a serious work of history. After my stroke I didn’t want to spend my time hanging around in libraries, but I did want to spend my time reflecting on some of what I have learned in over 30 years reporting on politics. Head of State is the result.
In Head of State, Britain is on the verge of an in/out EU referendum. When you began writing the novel, did you have any idea how relevant this issue would become?
I thought that the idea of an in/out referendum would be impossible for British politicians to dodge for much longer. It has slightly surprised me that this issue has certainly been pushed to the front of current the news agenda by events taking place now inside the Conservative party and UKIP. There is going to be a referendum, it will come sooner or later, and many of the issues discussed in Head of State will arrive at the forefront at that time. I just hope for all our sakes that we’re not led by the same kind of characters you find in my book – but I may well be wrong! Read more…
