Dugald Bruce Lockhart

And it sounds really obvious, but actually one can get so caught up

in description and character embellishment.

And I equate that in acting as the same as an actor, including myself, who might spend more time trying to grasp that essence of the person.

But of course, you are only what you do or say, don't say or don't do, as witnessed by somebody else, which again comes back to the theme of the book, which is who are you when you're alone on a rock in the middle of the Mediterranean?

There's nobody to watch you but yourself.

So I think having been an actor and having recognized how the combination of physicality, but primarily words, words are so important and understanding how a single word, the sound of a word, the shape of it and rhythm, I think is crucial.

This had to come into my writing.

And I find weirdly when I do write and I read it back,

I'm reading a rhythm.

I'm not really reading sense so much.

I mean, the sense is there, but there's a rhythm.

And I think this rhythm has come from probably 20 years of talking in a hammock pentameter, or at least understanding the importance of rhythm.

And if the rhythm doesn't seem right when you read it, then I know something's wrong.

There's a word out of place.

Well, I think I'm thinking with the man overseas who's out of his depth, A Good Man in Africa by William Boyd.

It was one of the first books I read.

The story behind that, I was living in Nigeria.

My parents were posted to Lagos.

And I read the book in the British outhouse, British High Commissioner outhouse near Abaddon, where the closing chapter of the book was actually set.

I know this because I met William Boyd and asked him about it, which is completely bizarre.