Jon Courtenay Grimwood

13. Every book is political in its own ways, but there's difference between consciously writing politics or putting it between the lines. Do you think of politics when you write books? What did you think when writing Kit Nouveau a deserter in present day Iraqi war/crisis? Or was it "just a background" for the character?

I try to keep politics in capital letters out of my books. But all writers bring their politics to writing and it’s impossible not to let your feelings show. redRobe was written in a fury at what was going on in the Balkans, with its ethnic cleansing and slaughter and the West turning a blind eye.

Like two million other people in the UK, I marched against the Iraq war. Not because I supported Saddam Hussein but because everyone who wasn’t an idiot or blinded by greed could see that Saddam and Al Qaeda were separate issues and muddling them would make the Middle East a more dangerous place. Now, I come from a service family, so I know soldiers die in battle and wars sometimes have to be fought. But the first job of a politician is not to make the situation worse. Iraq was immoral, possibly illegal and unquestionably stupid… Okay, I don’t have a very high opinion of politicians, so doing something immoral or illegal doesn’t surprise me. But I don’t employ them to be stupid…