Where are you happiest?

Sydney, with Berlin a good second.

What is your favourite music?

String quartets: late Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Shostakovich.

What is your favourite book?

The Russian Interpreter, an early one of Michael Frayn’s.

Who is your favourite author?

For light reading, Alison Lurie. When I went in for heavy reading, which was a long time ago, probably Samuel Beckett.

And your favourite literary hero and heroine?

I had a great feeling of kinship with Shirley in Mavis Gallant’s A Fairly Good Time in my late twenties, when I was overseas and adrift. Now I should go for the wisdom of age, but whose? I’ll settle for Miss Marple.

Name an early literary idol or influence whom you no longer admire – or vice versa.

I’m a Russianist, which means I should say Dostoevsky, but I won’t. In my twenties, I was very impressed by Brecht (and Kurt Weill too). Weill has lasted better, though I still go to see the Berliner Ensemble when I’m in Germany.

How old were you when your first book appeared?

Twenty-seven. It got reviewed on the front page of the TLS, so after that there was nowhere to go but down.

What, if anything, impedes your writing?

I’ve become quite reliable about meeting deadlines and writing regardless of what’s going on in my life. It’s probably a reaction against generations of PhD students telling me about their writing blocks.

How do you regard publishers?

Nobody has yet invented a viable alternative for anything medium- or large-scale. Judging by my experience with Melbourne University Press on A Spy in the Archives, Australian publishers do a better and quicker job than the American university publishers I’m used to.

What do you think of the state of criticism?

There seems to be a major shortage of book-review outlets in Australia, ABR of course being the shining exception. But even ABR doesn’t review at the length you get in the London Review of Books or the New York Review of Books.

If you had your time over again, would you choose to be a writer?

I didn’t choose to be a writer, I chose to be a historian. Writing just crept up on me, via the LRB and my 2010 memoir of an Australian childhood, My Father’s Daughter. But if I had my time over again, I wouldn’t start off as a writer. I didn’t have enough to write about then.

What do you think of writers’ festivals?

A good idea, much more visible here than in the United States, where I lived for many years. But I was a bit surprised to find out that people have to pay to go to most sessions at the Melbourne Writers Festival.

Do you feel artists are valued in our society?

I’ve only been back in Australia a year, after almost five decades living in England and the United States, so I can’t really say. They certainly seem to be more valued than they were when I left, but that’s not saying a lot.

What are you working on now?

A book on Stalin and his associates titled Playing on Stalin’s Team: The Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics. There are remnants of my academic past, like being based on archival research, but thanks to Stalin’s lethal habits I’ve got an exciting story to work with.