I was a fighter pilot, flying Hurricanes all round the Mediterranean. I flew in the Western Desert of Libya, in Greece, in Syria, in Iraq and in Egypt.
When I was 2, we moved into an imposing country mansion 8 miles west of Cardiff, Wales.
We all have our moments of brilliance and glory, and this was mine.
You can write about anything for children as long as you’ve got humour.
A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.
The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it.
Two rights don’t equal a left.
I’m right and you’re wrong, I’m big and you’re small, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Prayers were held in Assembly Hall. We all perched in rows on wooden benches while teachers sat up on the platform in armchairs, facing us.
I shot down some German planes and I got shot down myself, crashing in a burst of flames and crawling out, getting rescued by brave soldiers.
We make realities out of our dreams and dreams out of our realities. We are the dreamers of the dream.
The life of a writer is absolute hell compared to the life of a businessman.
Pain was something we were expected to endure. But I doubt very much if you would be entirely happy today if a doctor threw a towel in your face and jumped on you with a knife.
I do have a blurred memory of sitting on the stairs and trying over and over again to tie one of my shoelaces, but that is all that comes back to me of school itself.
I am only 8 years old, I told myself. No little boy of 8 has ever murdered anyone. It’s not possible.
My father was a Norwegian who came from a small town near Oslo. He broke his arm at the elbow when he was 14, and they amputated it.
Nobody gets a nervous breakdown or a heart attack from selling kerosene to gentle country folk from the back of a tanker in Somerset.
The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours and if he doesn’t go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him.
All through my school life I was appalled by the fact that masters and senior boys were allowed quite literally to wound other boys, and sometimes very severely.
Pear Drops were exciting because they had a dangerous taste. All of us were warned against eating them, and the result was that we ate them more than ever.