You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

for you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read?

Hi, this is Michael Silverblad, and welcome to Bookworm.

Today I'm very happy to have with me in the studio, John Mortimer, the author most recently of Dunster, but most of you know him as the author of all of the Rumphole books, the inspiration

for the PBS television series, the author as well of the bestsellers,

Titmus regained and its preceding volume Paradise postponed, Summers Lease, many books,

in addition to the wonderful autobiography clinging to the wreckage.

Dunster is published by Viking, and I wanted to, you know, as you all know, this show is about writing, and I wanted particularly to talk to John Mortimer because it seems to me

that he is the example par excellence of the man who knows how to structure a plot.

His books combine the cunning of the best Sherlock Holmes mysteries in their compactness as well.

The absolute frivolity and joy of P.G. Woodhouse, who seems to be able to make

his concoctions so simply at the drop of a hat and make complexities seem a dream, and, of course,

the great artificer of them all, Georges Fedot, whose French farses Mr. Mortimer has published.

How do you go about structuring a story?

Well, first of all, I do think plots are very important, and they've really gone rather out of fashion.

I think most of the highly acclaimed prize-winning novels have given up plots, really. They have

given them up for the sake of poetic writing. But I think it's very important for a reader to be

led through a story, and a plot is what makes you turn the page. And however, whatever brilliant things are on the page,

you need to turn it on to look at the next one.

I think if you take a book like Bleak House by Dickens,

...