That moving a lot really committed me to stability and committed me to ... being in control of my destiny. That was something that was very important to me. And it also made me very conservative about money.

I don’t think I can control my life or my writing. Every other writer I know feels he is steering himself, and I don’t have that feeling. I don’t have that sort of control. I’m simply becoming.

I keep office hours. I work from 9:30 to 6:00. It’s curious. In the morning, I could just about tie my shoelaces before noon, but I can write. It’s obviously a different part of my brain that’s working.

Well, I work from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed. And I work seven days a week.

Always… as soon as I knew what writers were, I wanted to be one. I’ve got the perfect temperament for a writer; perfectly happy alone in a room, making things up.

I try to start work before 9am. My writing room is probably my favourite place in the world. It’s in the garden, about a minute’s walk from the house.

Even though I have a highly visual imagination, I’ve had to learn just how much can be said onscreen without a word, and David and Steve have taught me that.

I have to say that I can’t stand lists of ‘must do’s’, whether in life or in writing. Something rebels in me when I’m told what I have to do before I’m fifty, or have to buy this season, or have to write if I want to be a success.

These days I can usually calm that particular critic down by feeding her a biscuit and giving her a break, although in the early days I sometimes had to take a week off before she’d take a more kindly view of the work in progress.

I couldn’t have asked for better collaborators on the stage play than John Tiffany (director) and Jack Thorne (writer).