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I try to research or make up for myself what happened in any character's life. From when he was born until the first page of the script. I fill in the blanks.

I get sent a lot of scripts which feature him as a kind of all-purpose Victorian literary character and really understand little, if anything, about him, his life or his books.

A big part of what I wanted to do with this character was go from when I was a boy and try and develop into a man, really try and play him as a man who is on this search, on a journey of personal, spiritual, political, social discovery.

Here was a man with loads of talent, loads of ability, lots of love to give; but that had been stifled and aborted. I became very fond of that character.

I love spending time researching a character and reading about them.

I wanted more in depth ideas about the character and it never came.

I always look for good stories and good characters, and if they're placed in a whodunit, then I'm interested.

For some reason, all my characters come to me with their names attached to them. I never have to search for the names.

As the writer of a pseudonymous book, I gave up my own accumulated history as a novelist and became what I had been as a child: unnamed, unidentified, unacknowledged. Invisible. In a very real sense, what I hope for in the process of imagining a book is to disappear.