You write very good action sequences--do you visualise them in your head in advance?

I used to box and fence and I have a strong sense of fighting as a series of moves. I collect weapons and I work out action sequences with them in my back garden, preferably when the neighbours are not watching.

Your books have a tremendous sense of the heft of weapons, of their physical feel.

That is what is important about them, as often as not. If you want to know how the Romans conquered the known world, the answer is the gladius, the short thrusting sword they used. An 18-inch blade that you push forward is different from a three-foot blade that you slash with--it means that you can stand shoulder to shoulder in a wall, where a slashing glaive keeps you six foot apart from your comrades in each direction. No matter how the Celtic armies outnumbered the Romans, at the point of contact of the lines of battle, it was three to one in the Romans' favour. You can't learn to drive by being told about it; you have to get in the seat and have the wheel and the brake to hand: you have to hold a weapon to know how it felt. Collecting weapons has another advantage--I have a friendly rivalry with Terry Pratchett about sales and prestige. He rang me up to say that they were going to name a fossil turtle after him and asked what I had to say about that. And I could say that I had just bought a Winchester that Wyatt Earp probably used.

Your work has brought you money and a measure of fame...

Things that can change people for the worse. Since my books started selling, I have been able to buy an ordinary house in an ordinary neighbourhood--anything more would be bad for me. I had a taste of the good life when I was not well-known, and I learned my lesson. When I was editor of the local paper, I would get to book myself hotel rooms; then, when I was editor-in- chief, assistants would book me junior suites. Then I got to be managing editor and would be booked larged suites--and once I got given a single room and made a terrible fuss and got compensated. I mentioned this to a friend, who pointed out that I had become the sort of pompous prat I used to mock. Grace is one of those things you lose if you don't use it. One day my books will stop selling and I will go out of print and be forgotten; people will be surprised that I used to be a writer. While it lasts you can enjoy it but keep your feet on the ground.

Do you plot your books in advance?

I never have much of a clue where my books are going. In the present one, I have two characters from the Rigante people and one of them is going to steal that bull, and that is all I know. I need the excitement of not knowing how a scene works out until I write it. The difference between now and my early books is that I rewrite and reshape more. I have to work at a craft that used to be spontaneous.

You have an interest in real history.

The one thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing. We are not brighter and better than those who came before us; everything that Machiavelli said in the early Renaissance is true today. I tend to write about what ought to have been, rather than what was--alternate histories in which things worked differently. The Celts gave the Romans a bloody nose early on. Nit Tjeu were not interested in empire amd were doomed by that.

Are there cusp points in history and how do they work? In the Indian Civil Wars of the early 17th century, a crucial battle between a humane Sufi prince and his intolerant bigot brother was won because the Sufi fell off his elephant.

Machiavelli points out that love is a gift given the prince by the people and fear is something he can demand from them; and therefore it is better to be loved than feared. If a ruler who is loved falls off his battle elephant his people may well panic; if a ruler who is feared falls off he has probably given them contingency plans and they will be terrified of what he might do if they do anything wrong. As a journalist, I saw nice guys finishing last; I like to construct histories in which that is not true, at least for a while--in most of my worlds, any triumph by good is going to be temporary.