I think it's also the case that I'm not as widely travelled, or as well-educated in history, as most of the other novelists I meet: so I have to write about my own country, at the present time, because it's more or less all I know about!

A handwritten manuscript page from The Rotters' Club was displayed as part of the Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands exhibition running at the British Library from 11 May-25 September 2012. ". He studied at King Edward's School Birmingham and Trinity College Cambridge.

His work has an underlying preoccupation with political issues although this serious engagement is often expressed comically in the form of satire. It is set within the "carve up" of the UK's resources which was carried out by Margaret Thatcher's right wing Conservative governments of the 1980s.