Don't keep rewriting and polishing something if it isn't setting the world on fire: start something new instead and consider the earlier story a learning experience.

I watched 'Who' with a mixture of affection and exasperation through the eighties, always ready to cheer on the Doctor but seldom feeling that the series was playing to its strengths. Some of the adventures, revisited on DVD, turn out to be better than I remembered - others just as infuriating.

I've always loved far future SF, so it was more or less a given that I would one day want to write in that form.

I don't know why, but American sci-fi writers seem to focus on the near-future, which has given us Brits a clear run at the most fascinating.

The Tories and the Lib Dems talk about social mobility, but, short of winning the lottery, the only way to guarantee young people from all backgrounds the opportunity to do better and to raise aspirations is through education.

When I was a kid, we called every teacher, every parent - anyone over the age of 20, it seemed - 'Mr. or Mrs. so-and-so.'

I come from a background in the military where everyone had health care. We understood the value of education as a given. You learn a skill, earn a pension and go on to 'Be all that you can be'... You invest in people. You hold people accountable.

I wasn't stupid, or very smart. I didn't finish my education.