I vividly remember being 14. That was the age when I started to get happy: I started being a writer and stopped being a loser.

Until he lost all his money, my father was a successful north London Jewish businessman. He was unusual among his immediate family in that he was enormously cultured and had an incredible library.

My greatest fear is disappointing the reader, so each book has to be better than the one before.

I fear dying in the middle of a book. It would be so annoying to write 80,000 words and not get to the end. I'm phobic about it. So when I'm writing a book I leave messages all over the house for people to know how the story ends, and then someone can finish it for me.

I believe that, by and large, people are good and everybody you meet is more likely to surprise you in a positive way than in a negative way.

My wife, Jill, and I have an incredibly close working relationship, and an incredibly happy married one. We met through work. I was the world's worst advertising copywriter. She had the misfortune to be my account director, so from the very start she was my boss, and she still is.