‘Ancestors, distant relatives and the past really were not part of my sense of family as I grew up. Something of my father’s exile from Scotland – self-exile really – and then exile from Great Britain, has rubbed off on me and probably affected the way I write. When I started writing, I didn’t feel that I was quite part of the English literary world or its systems of class or whatever – I always felt something of an outsider in it. That’s faded over the years, but I think it has made quite an impression on me, this sense of not being deeply connected to all the branches and roots of family…’
Ian McEwan, interviewed for the Guardian