My Antarctic expedition is just about doable, just feasible and that's what is exciting to me. If I knew it was possible, if I knew I could do it without too much bother, I wouldn't be interested.

I don't think of myself as an explorer but as an athlete.

Expeditions are escapism. The stuff that we're normally concerned about just doesn't matter out there. Tax returns, gas bill, none of it. Life becomes very simple, it's about moving in a certain direction - north if you're going north - staying warm and not getting eaten. That's it.

When I'm skiing, I listen to electronic music. It's repetitive and let's me get into a groove and crank out the miles.

Always, some great culture is dying to enrich the soil of new harvests, some civlization is crumbling to rubbish to be the hill of a more beautiful city, some race is spending itself that a lower and more barbarous world may inherit its stored treasure house.

Since the moment I could hold a pencil, I have spent nearly all day every day writing. And there is not an age group that I have not written for. You can read me from birth 'til death.

Since John Smith's death and the Blair/Brown takeover in 1994, party members have watched the way in which an elite leadership group has formed in the Labour party, cutting itself off from the party's traditions, values and norms of behaviour.

I think it's almost impossible to edit something to death. I think you can make things better almost indefinitely.