Stephen writes because it has never occurred to him not to.His father had a small library; he has been an English teacher throughout his working life; and from early childhood has been surrounded by books. He finds it impossible not to emulate what he has read. He believes If it is true that we are what we eat, it is equally true that we write what we have read. His reading habits are wide and indiscriminate. He loves diaries and letters, fictions of all periods, but nineteenth century ones especially and Trollope in particular .Among historical novelists he admires Rose Tremain, George Macdonald Fraser, Penelope Fitzgerald and, above all, the now-almost-forgotten Zoe Oldenbourg.
Stephen has written a number of plays, a musical (which has been performed) and a film script(which has been filmed).In recent years he has concentrated on fiction and in particular on trying to revive what he calls 'portfolio fiction'-a form which probably began with the Odyssey - in which a long narrative emerges out of a series of short ones. Thus Mr Blackwood's Fabulariumis the story of an excursion to the Great Exhibition of1851 in which all the excursionists tell tales and in so doing create a panorama of the age as well as a large-scale drama in which they all play a part.
For Stephen, writing is as much a tactile activity as an imaginative one. He is unusual among authors in that he writes with a pen or, more usually, with a pencil. He likes to measure progress in the number of sharpenings: an average day contains four, a good one six. He loves the moment when the pencil gets so short you can no longer hold it. Mr Blackwood's Fabularium consumed a five-pack of Staedtler HBs.
