My wife Barbara and I will have been married for 40 years in November. What do I love about her? That\u2019s a long list. She makes me laugh, we talk all the time about everything, and we have essentially the same values. We both feel strongly about politics, but we\u2019re not hair-shirt socialists. <\/p>\n
If we work to make life better in our country, we don\u2019t think we have to deny ourselves a glass of Champagne.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We have six grandchildren and are hoping for great grandchildren, but the youth of today don\u2019t have babies by accident the way we did.<\/p>\n
Life after loss<\/p>\n
I was 19 when my son Emanuele was born \u2013 as you may guess, he wasn\u2019t planned. When you get married [to first wife Mary] at that age, people think it\u2019s a disaster, but then this baby arrives, and you adore him and are programmed to make him the absolute centre of your existence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He died just short of his 50th birthday, in 2018, of leukaemia. It\u2019s a hole in your life. You don\u2019t get over it. You don\u2019t get past it. As the years go by, it hurts a bit less but I think about him every day. I hear a song on the radio and think, ‘Emanuele would have liked that.’ <\/p>\n
He\u2019s buried in a natural environment where there are no\u00a0tombstones, he\u2019s part of the landscape. Barbara and I have bought plots there too, so we will all end up in the same place.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Early riser<\/p>\n
I like to work first thing. This morning, I got up at 5.15am, which is standard when I\u2019m writing a book. If I\u2019m up that early, I take a nap after lunch. It\u2019s an old-age thing. I still work eight hours a day and can\u2019t imagine retiring. <\/p>\n
Authors don\u2019t really, they just slow down. I haven\u2019t reached that point \u2013 I\u2019m enjoying it too much \u2013 but nobody lives forever.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Set in stone\u00a0<\/p>\n