"I'd always known I was going to be a writer. The official school magazine, The Carliol, was a bit staid, with boys writing essays on "Duty". There was another magazine, which was more demotic. Most of my writing for it was utterly scurrilous and I wonder how I managed to get away with it. The only career advice I had came from Adrian Barnes, the head of English. He said I should get a job as a lorry-driver and write my first novel in transport caffs on the Great North Road. But I didn't have a driving licence and I'd had the idea of going to Oxford because that's where people in schoolboy stories ended up."
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