Dugald Bruce Lockhart

So I read it at 18 in a big thunderstorm.

And the final part was being set above my roof in the room where I think my brother was sleeping there.

And I found the story of the hapless Morgan Leafy, I think is his name, the British embassy, who gets himself in so much trouble and he has to try and find a way out of it.

And the way William Boyd wrote describing, first of all, this African country, which actually doesn't exist, I think he was brought up in Ghana.

So it's a mix of sort of several West African countries.

But the wit and the comedy and the scrapes this one man against adversity found himself in really, really appealed to me as a writing style.

So that was one of the first things.

At the same time, I was brought up on a lot of Gerald Durrell.

In fact, my mom used to read to my brother and me when we were younger, my family and other animals and all of his canon, actually.

But I read it when I was 17.

Then I read it again 10 years later.

I read it again recently.

He wrote a ghost story called The Entrance.

And Gerald Durrell has written nothing like this before because they're always very, very funny, often based on fact of his growing up on Corfu with his family.

The Entrance is a ghost story set in France at the turn of the century.

And it's set in the first person.

It's a framework narrative.

It's about a guy who's visiting some friends.

And the night he arrives, there's a big storm.

And they say they're having a glass of wine.