John Wilson

Was it good?

In your 2002 novel Spies, your elderly protagonist looks back on childhood events in which he and a friend become convinced that the friend's mother is a spy.

The book's very much about the imagination and the uncertainty of memory.

So how much did it owe to your own uncertain memories of childhood?

We should just explain the father in the book is incredibly controlling and the friend's mother is clearly living in fear of him.

What an amazing coincidence that he found you while you were still writing the book.

Your next choice, Michael Frayn, is learning Russian.

In the early 1950s, you did national service and you joined the Army Intelligence Corps and were selected to learn Russian at Cambridge University.

So were you being trained to become a spy?

I read that Alan Bennett was also on that same course.

Really?

You can't imagine Alan Bennett being a sort of trained for espionage?

One of your many literary achievements is to have become a preeminent translator of the work of Anton Chekhov, including all of the late plays, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard.

To what extent can that love of Chekhov be traced back to learning Russian, do you think?

How are your versions different from many of the others that had gone before you?

You said that your translations of Chekhov, your versions are more direct, they're more conversational, they're possibly funnier than a lot of other adaptations of Chekhov.

I'm just going to wrap up this thought about Chekhov by throwing a quote back at you from your fellow Russian translator, Alan Bennett, who once said that Michael Frayn is the man who drew the cheque from Chekhov.

Fair enough?

Your next choice, Michael Frayn, is Scoop by Evelyn Waugh.

He's a 1938 satirical novel about newspaper journalism, which you say is the funniest book ever written.