The Crime Interviews: Volume Two by Len Wanner (Blasted Heath 2012)

Good question. Why are you writing books?

I'm writing books to try and make a connection with a reader. It doesn't matter whether it's a reader who's on the Booker panel or a reader who's a waitress... Whenever I'm up for a prize I think: "Who the fuck are you to judge me?" And then I think: "Give me that fucking prize." Ha! You don't know these people exist until they write to you to say: "You're up for a prize. Do you want to come and have a bad hotel dinner, while feeling really nervous and wearing uncomfortable clothes, and then get up and make a cunt of yourself in front of a big audience?" What the fuck?

I mean, prizes are good marketing tools. They're shorthand for telling readers: "This is a good book." But a better way for people to come to your books is for their pals to say: "You'll like that book. It really meant something to me."

When did a book first really mean something to you?

When I was nineteen, reading Thérèse Raquin in a bedsit, being totally transported by the writing and the way two words can click together, and sitting back, thinking: "What an amazing thing to do with your life – to make that sort of connection with another person, to feel exactly what Zola was talking about, or looking at, or imagining... What an incredible connection!" And what I really love about Zola is that he was a political writer.

Do you see yourself as a political writer?

Yeah! Orwell was who I stole from the library... So it's that connection: reading A Tale of Two Cities and sweating with my heart racing at the end because it was so exciting. But I think you really have to keep your eyes on the prize, because otherwise you become bitter and disillusioned despite having everything. You're being published, you're making a living, you're spending your days in pyjamas wrestling with words, and people are writing to you saying: "I read your book and it mattered to me." How lucky is that?

(Len Wanner interviewing Denise Mina.)

Character Parts by John Mortimer (Penguin Books 1986)

'But there was no election for leader. It was all done by word of mouth?'

'Word of mouth. Yes. All sorts of strange things were happening. Ted Heath went up to Scotland and for the first time in his life he shot a stag! Can you imagine that?' Lord Hailsham was laughing again. 'I think Ted Heath was Warwick the Kingmaker.'

'Was it all a great disappointment to you?'

'Not at all! I was just not selected. It must have been much worse for Ted Heath, To be chosen and then de-stooled. In the presence of the tribe! To be de-stooled.' His lips pursed in a long and hilarious double 'o'. 'What a terrible humiliation.'

'Besides which I've known all the recent Prime Ministers and not one of them died happy in his bed. Except Macmillan. Yes. I think he'll die quite happy.'

'Is Macmillan a wonderful actor in the House of Lords?'

Of course. The old boy's a superb performer. But when he was Prime Minister he was always rather piano. Rather quiet and understated. And you know why? The best of his generation was killed in the 1914 war. And he could see their ghosts looking down at him from an imaginary gallery, all saying, "Look down there. It's little Harold! They've made him Prime Minister, and we were cleverer than him." That made Macmillan rather quiet.'