WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE FILM?

Out of the Past, made in 1947. Nothing made since has been as bleakly satisfying or diabolically ambivalent.

AND YOUR FAVOURITE BOOK?

Anna Karenina. In non-fiction: Richard Ellman's Oscar Wilde.

NAME THREE PEOPLE YOU WOULD MOST LIKE TO DINE WITH.

(Excluding Balzac, Wilde, Cervantes, Marc Bloch, George Eliot, Ingrid Bergman, Carole Lombard, and other dead ones, and the ones I'd like to poison – where would one start?) Elizabeth Warren, Helen Mirren, Hilary Mantel.

WHICH WORD DO YOU MOST DISLIKE, AND WHICH WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE BACK IN PUBLIC USAGE?

'Outcome' (and 'closure' and 'impact' and 'passionate'). 'Dispassionate'. Verbs in general.

WHO IS YOUR FAVOURITE AUTHOR?

Gabriel Garcia Márquez.

AND YOUR FAVOURITE LITERARY HERO AND HEROINE?

Don Quixote, Anna Karenina, Dorothea, Humbert Humbert.

NAME AN EARLY LITERARY IDOL OR INFLUENCE WHOM YOU NO LONGER ADMIRE.

Jean Paul Sartre

WHAT, IF ANYTHING, IMPEDES YOUR WRITING?

Failures of talent, will, discipline, and imagination – just about everything.

HOW DO YOU REGARD PUBLISHERS?

A good one can make up for a lot of one's personal and professional deficiencies.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE STATE OF CRITICISM?

Though I doubt a critic ever improved a writer's work, a good one makes a difference to a culture. They are rare and valuable. Bad critics are worse than bad writers, but I know from trying years ago that they have an equally good excuse. It is for this reason that I have avoided answering the question.

IF YOU HAD your TIME OVER AGAIN, WOULD YOU CHOOSE TO BE A WRITER?

Yes, but the next time I would choose. This time I feel as if it simply happened. And if next time it turned out I could paint or play the piano or dance or act or make films or do physics, I might choose one of those things instead.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF WRITERS' FESTIVALS?

I find I like them more than I used to. Perhaps I like other writers more than I used to; or feel a little more comfortable with the idea that a writer is what I am.

DO YOU FEEL ARTISTS ARE VALUED IN OUR SOCIETY?

Relative to sports people and all the species of celebrity, they get pretty scant respect. But were society to value artists more highly, very likely they would most value the less deserving.

WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON NOW?

A book about a Vietnam veteran-anthropologist-biologist-philanthropist-puritan-obsessive-friend, and the people of a remote Aboriginal community. And a few other things.