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One of the things I really like about Victorian novels is the close anatomisation of character. People's gestures and mannerisms and the quality of their thought is very closely identified and analysed.

The core character of Victorians is one of aspiration and ambition, and Victorians have, since first settlement days... demonstrated that core character over and over again.

I am fascinated by history and particularly the Victorian era.

Victorian values meant brutalizing people who were often poor.

I am obsessed with the whole Victoriana thing, the whole Jack the Ripper London era, the grayness of it, the haunted feeling of it, all ancient and bloody.

I used to be very fascinated by Victorian stuff, and my best-known books, the 'Mortal Engines' series, have a sort of retro, Victorian vibe, despite being set in the far future.

Journalists are always calling my features Edwardian or Victorian, whatever that means. I am small, and people were smaller in those times. I'm pale and sickly-looking. I look fragile-like a doll. But sometimes I just wish I had less of a particular look, one that was more versatile.

I had never read Victorian novels before going overseas. I read a handful of authors, but I had not immersed myself in the literature of the 19th century.

I see in Cambridge, particularly among the women dons, a series of such grotesques! It is almost like a caricature series from Dickens to see our head table at Newnham.

With the possible exception of steampunk aficionados, many reasonable people must view my fascination with Victorian and Edwardian popular fiction - mysteries, fantasy, and adventure - as eccentric or merely antiquarian.