Nicholas Mosley - novelist, biographer, screenwriter and editor - describes his professional life dealing with words and his struggle with the paradox of trying to get at reality through writing. He traces his life in a variety of settings across the world, from the West Indies to the House of Lords, and discusses the writing of his novel series, Catastrophe Practice, the last volume of which won the Whitbread Prize in 1990, and also of a biography of his father, Sir Oswald Mosley.