My third post as guest-editor of 'The Afterword' for Canada's National Post newpaper:

When I’m in England I write my novels in a sixteenth-century half-timbered cottage beside a castle, and in Canada overlooking a 19th century wooden barn on our farm in southern Ontario. In the course of looking after the woodland on our farm I’ve felled many trees by axe and worked with timber a good deal, and that’s helped me to appreciate the extraordinary skill and tenacity of woodworkers in the past ...