There is nothing cleverer underneath.

I read that at a kitchen table with the certificate in front of me and I put my head down on my arms on the table for a long time.

Because he was right that I would try to make it mean something larger, and I had already started.

In the car park I had already begun assembling a version in which Walter Strand was a man who had given his whole life to other people’s happiness and had asked for one thing at the end.

That version is available and it is very good and a great many people have told it back to me over three years.