After finishing the corrections, I arrange everything on the writing desk very neatly. Here all the pencils sharpened and upended in a mug, all my books and card indexes are lined up as if on parade. Only when everything is in exactly the right place do I begin. I’ll break only to walk around my ‘thinking path’—a circuit at the back where I work out how to tackle a particular passage. Easy sections can sometimes be solved in a single loop; difficult ones take seven or eight circuits. If it goes well, especially towards the end of a book, I’ll keep tapping away until after dark, and only come in for supper when I’m spent and unable to write anymore. If I’ve really managed to concentrate, I’m usually too shattered to do anything afterwards, except watch a DVD: Bleak House saw me through The Last Mughal, and for my latest, Return of a King, its been The Killing. If I nod off mid-episode, it means it has been a good day’s work.