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Hello, today, Diary of a Wimpy Kid created Jeff Kinney

on his adventure into the world of bookselling,

why authors long for fog, unlike the rest of us,

and Matt Haig shares his passion for a magical children's book by Paul Gallico.

I think because it's a story about a transformation, a boy who turns into a cat and then

becomes a boy again, and I think when you're sort of stuck in a kind of emotional, psychological

nightmare like I was for a little while, just believing in this sort of fantastical change was very sort of therapeutic.

More on the power of transformation later. But first we start with a writer who throughout his career

has effortlessly chronicled the history of the 20th century. In novels like any human heart

and the earlier The new confessions,

William Boyd has used his central characters as mirrors,

reflecting back the complicated experience of living through world events.

His latest sweet caress continues that tradition,

but brings a welcome female viewpoint to a century that can at times seem only to belong to men, guns and dead presidents.

His leading lady, Amory Clay, wrongly recorded in her 1908 birth announcement as a boy,

is a trailblazer who forges her own path, ignoring convention to become a war photographer,

freeze-framing everything from Weimar, Berlin, through fascist riots in London,

the Second World War, the Jazz Age, the Vietnam War, and much else.

William Boyd's latest novel, always an anticipated treat, is as ambitious as any he's undertaken.

And he joins me now. Welcome, William.

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