Nicholas Shakespeare

And his favorite line, it was, sicken again for the shouts and the slaughter.

So you had this, I had this image of this elderly man who was blind, leaning forward in his chair on a cane stick, absolutely galvanized by images of rape and pillage on a continent thousands of miles away.

Anyway, he was a very important influence for me.

And I, when I wrote my second novel, third novel, The Dance Upstairs, I was given a Borges, I think it was probably the one and only Borges fellowship to go and

in his house down in Madelplata, where he used to go and write.

I was allowed to go down there for three months and finish my novel.

And that was a great honor and privilege.

And so I've always kind of held a candle for Borges.

And he came over to England, actually, and I got him on a TV program with Bruce Chatwin and Mario Vargas Llosa, the great Peruvian writer.

And they were just, Chatwin said, I mean, Borges, he's just a genius.

You can't go anywhere without packing a Borges.

It's like packing a toothbrush.

I was standing with Borges about to bring him on to the stage and he overheard this on the monitor and he said, how unhygienic.

Yes, Graham Greene is one of my mentors, along with John le Carré, and I suppose earlier people like John Buchan.

Greene, I didn't read him until we were in Argentina at the same time as I was meeting Borges.

And Greene had just written The Honorary Consul, which was all about a British diplomat who's held hostage up in the north.

And this seemed to mirror my father's position, because my father was in charge of the embassy in Buenos Aires.

And we had

We were surrounded by bodyguards the whole time.

And we had six SAS people with nicknames like Topper and Lofty living in our house with machine guns and grenades for fear of kidnapping, which was quite prevalent then.