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Contemporary Britain seems an endlessly fascinating place to me - but if I knew a little bit more about other places, and other times, maybe it wouldn't.

I live a perfectly happy and comfortable life in Blair's Britain, but I can't work up much affection for the culture we've created for ourselves: it's too cynical, too knowing, too ironic, too empty of real value and meaning.

I think the U.K. is too small to write about from within it and still make it seem foreign and exotic and interesting.

Britain's a funny place and there's a lot of funny people coming out of there and a lot of people are finding mediums to express themselves.

I don't have a deep link with England like, say, Jonathan Coe or Hanif Kureishi might demonstrate. For me, it is like a mythical place.

Brits are cool at the moment. We've taken over the world, what with 'Game of Thrones', 'Downton Abbey', One Direction... to be British is to be fashionable.

I think that London is very much like that. I find there's humour in the air and people are interesting. And I think that it's a place which is constantly surprising. The worst thing about it? I think it can be smug and aggressive.

The country of Britain is wonderful because of its royalty.

The British nation is unique in this respect. They are the only people who like to be told how bad things are, who like to be told the worst.