Now, this is probably not something they teach you in writing school, and they’re quite right not to, but I got my first writing contract by telling the publisher how much I didn’t like one of their books. Maybe it wasn’t quite as bad as that sounds, but what an opening line.

To misquote William Faulkner wildly and wilfully, I only write when inspiration takes me. I just make sure that inspiration takes me every morning at nine o’clock.

If you stand at the foot of the cathedral steps in Girona, some hundred kilometres northeast of Barcelona, what you’re really standing on is the Via Augusta, one of the roads that led to Rome.