Owen Paterson

I was perhaps about 10 years old when a local farmer rang us up to say he had found a young badger and would we take it in. So we did; it was a female called Bessy and she lived in the boiler room. She was extremely intelligent, had a very low opinion of cats but loved the dogs. She was pretty well trained; she went in the car.

CBS started to confiscate our packages and mail as a safety procedure. A lot of packages that people send for the holidays and to our kids we can't open. A lot of times they are from overseas. It's very upsetting at times.

The historical novelist has to consider what has actually happened, while the SF writer is dealing in possibilities, but they are both in the business of imagining a world unlike our own and yet connected to it.