Reading your advice for writing stories was very interesting, but I wanted to ask you how you go about writing and planning your characters. I’m a big fan of the Arthur books and Stonehenge, and have been amazed at how many characters you introduce without them feeling anything but convincingly alive. Do you sit down and analyze them psychologically at the story-planning stage, and work out what character-changing or revealing stories can happen to them individually, or do you deal with them in more detail as bigger situations come up? I wondered, with all the hundreds of characters you’ve created by now, how you see those characters.. whether they are each a conscious list of traits and flaws, or people you don’t completely know but learn more about by writing them in a way that keeps you convinced in them?

(ps:I really think I enjoyed the Arthur trilogy much more for the slow beginning you’ve commented on – I found it helped build up the reality of what came later, especially in making some of Derfel’s early life a bit quieter, and also giving some sense of the albeit limited peace and history that the Saxons were starting to encroach on. Julian