Nicholas Shakespeare

And I was picking up the most amazing pieces of

really plutonium-grade gossip from people who were kind of running the world.

I mean, there were people who owned uranium mines in Niger.

There were people who were dealing with Gaddafi in Libya.

There were people who were being asked by the Iranian government to smelt gold that had been stolen from the Kuwaiti reserves when Saddam invaded.

I mean, I just had a fantastic time on The Touchline.

And so The Touchline became, for the novel, a kind of

stage set where I had a ringside seat.

It's thrillingly at some of the most dramatic possible scenarios that a novelist could wish for.

I'm really grateful that you have read it in that way because, yes, I mean, I wanted the thriller form

just in terms of helping you create a story that the reader would read.

I mean, because if the reader doesn't follow you, it doesn't matter what you say.

So you have to have the architecture of a narrative.

And it's a very difficult thing to tell a story.

I mean, storytelling is...

I remember Glenn McGrath said something brilliant about bowling.

He was asked what his secret was.

And he was told you just have to put the ball just one yard in front of mid and off down the pitch.

And he said, it's very simple.

The difficult thing is to keep it simple.