As a child, growing up in Hampstead, North London, I was shockingly fair-skinned. Holidays involved me spending the second and third day face-down on a bed, shrieking should anyone touch my blistered skin.

Just as there are moments when the words flow and it feels like the easiest job in the world, there are many more when I think I have nothing to say, and my journalism training taught me that writing is a job, that you write whether you are inspired or not, and that the only way to unlock creativity is to write through it.

I had just got married when I started writing my fourth novel. I'd come back from honeymoon, moved into our first house - a gorgeous little carriage house in London - and made my office on the third floor, overlooking the treetops in North West London.

I believe it is the flaws that make us interesting, our backgrounds, the hardships.

As a father, you immediately become uncool, especially the older they get. The older you get, it's inevitable that, as cool as you think you are, you're probably just as lame in your kids' eyes.

Golf is not my priority. I would hope people see me as a Christian man who loved his family, who loved being in the heat of competition and sometimes succeeded at it; who understood that golf was his job and that he was very lucky to play it for a living.

We always blame other people when things go wrong. For example, family to friends, you think they'll stay by your side, and you realise they never do. But that's life.

My dad was an only child. His father raised him all but alone after his mother abandoned the two of them. He was only three years old.