A really good piece of advice for novel writers is: read. Read novels, read lots of novels, read every day, keep reading. That’s the way you learn how a book works, how it is constructed, what it gives and what it takes. You learn what language can do.

So any decent writer obeys this advice and spends a part of every day reading. I’m evidently not a decent writer, because I simply can’t do it.

There was a time, from the age of about five onwards, when I really did read, at every opportunity. It might have something to do with growing up in an era before Gameboys and social media, and anything vaguely electronic. Being totally uninterested in sport probably helped too. I would come home from school, have my tea, do my homework, go to bed and read. In the morning, I would wake up and read until…