I wrote my first novel when I was thirteen.
I called it ‘Armageddon’, and it was about the end of the world. The Archbishop of Canterbury was one of the main characters. I wrote 60,000 words then gave up.
But I always knew I was going to be a writer. Mum tried to warn me off it. Dad, a writer (Hugh Popham), waved his miserable royalty cheques. Nothing worked. A writer I became.
My first proper book was called Tokyo - the City at the End of the World, published in 1985, reissued in 2021. It’s impossible to categorise, has sold in modest numbers, but spawned an obscure sub-niche of Japan-end-of-the world books, notably The Mushroom at the End of the World.
A year or two back, Jeremy Paxman asked two University Challenge teams, ‘Which British journalist has written two books about Aung San Suu Kyi?’ I was the answer! One of the students got it, bless him!
I am very proud of The Lady and the Peacock and The Lady and the Generals. Sadly, the lady in question, though still her people’s beloved leader, is not the heroine we fondly believed. Rather, she is a truly tragic figure.
In between these books I wrote about five million words for The Independent newspaper, from thirty-three different countries.