I’ve always been impressed – overawed, indeed – by writers who can talk. Margaret Atwood. Ian Rankin. The sort of person they invite onto Radio Four. Numerous other authors with whom I’ve shared panels. Good grief, if they can all talk that well, why do they go to the bother of sitting down and typing things?

I, on the other hand,  find it is sometimes  possible to speak fluently and sometimes possible to make sense, but not both at the same time.  My writing is driven less by a burning urge to create, than by a burning urge to go back over the conversations I messed up in real life and re-write them the way I wish they’d gone.   So heaven knows what Ian Williams of the Catskill Review of Books actually recorded earlier this week for WJFF radio. I haven’t dared to listen.

Nevertheless, it was a real pleasure to talk with a man who, despite being descended from the rebellious Welsh, really does know his Romans. The title above is his, stolen from his blog.