I worry sometimes that I'm a bit moralistic; always writing about men who are learning to grow up, not be so self-absorbed, selfish or badly behaved. I wonder if that's dull and liberal and wimpy? I should probably write something that celebrates wickedness.

I've been a compulsive reader for as long as I can remember.

I've only ever been recognised in the street once. In Sweden, strangely.

I really was a terrible actor. I did it for years in my twenties because it was like being at university again.

I found it quite funny when my teacher at secondary school saw me bowl and wanted me to throw the javelin. So I tried, and I kept hitting the back of my head!

The graduate earnings premium, used by the Tories to justify many of their regressive higher education policies, is fast becoming a myth.

To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worth while. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.

It is imperative to change the way we look at education. We should invest in the foundation of school readiness from birth to age 5.