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I love the 19th-century idea of the flaneur, the poet wandering through the streets.

Joseph Bazalgette created a sewer system which he originally sized for London's needs of the time - he then doubled it to anticipate the future beyond. These are the qualities that I admire.

I remember when I was trying to do 'Metropolitan,' in breaks I would read a page of two of Jane Austen as a palate-cleanser.

I think the 19th century is an extraordinary period with a welling up of creativity and all kinds of experimentation and exploration going on at least until 1940.

What I find remarkable is that so much of the 18th century literature that I read is more accessible than reading your alternative weekly from ten years ago. People really aspired to write clearly.

If what I write is literature, I guess you'd better emphasize the 'litter.'

Also, an area that interests me - and it will probably take years to state what I mean - is the period of the rise of democracy, with Tom Paine, which is around the turn of the 18th century into the 19th.

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.

Victorian literature was my subject at Harvard.

I went down to the sewers in London and looked at a campaigning group in London called RATS, Rowers Against Thames Sewage, and I went to Sewage School and hung out with kids learning to make sewage soup and how to clean sewage. And it was great - really good fun.