"This relates to my Maggie O’Farrell obsession. She recommended Lucia Berlin in an interview I read a few years ago. So, like any good stalker, I checked it out. These stories feel very contemporary. I suppose if I’ve learned anything from reading, it’s that people don’t change very much through the ages. Our personal problems and our joys are entirely relatable, whatever the era. The women Berlin writes about seem entirely real. You can feel them in the room with you. There is humor and real beauty in her words. If I was the underlining type, these books would be heaving with biro. But I’m no vandal."

"In 1974, when I was at the Berlin International Film Festival with Little Malcolm, I met Fassbinder. He was then making Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, which I think is one of his best films. It’s a wonderful observation of social and racial prejudice, and of youth and age."

"""As I already had Raw Power and knew what The Stooges were about, it was big news that Iggy Pop was putting out his first solo record under his own name. The generation before me who were forming bands - people like Siouxsie and Lydon - had all been Iggy freaks from hearing about him via David Bowie's patronage. As was the case in the 70s, David Bowie was the provider of all the cultural information that moulded the decade. You found out about Burroughs through Bowie, you found out about Kraftwerk through Bowie and it was the same with Iggy Pop. There were rumours in the music press that David Bowie had been working on this record and when it came out it was a big deal. And it was amazing. Nothing sounded like it before and I don't think anything has quite managed to sound like it since. There is so much written about the Berlin period that there is no point in me going on about it, but I think of all the records of that time, this is the one that is most Berlin-like to me. I now know Berlin and have spent time there before it changed, and The Idiot does convey the atmosphere of being on the Berlin streets at 3.30 in the morning having been to various insalubrious establishments and looking for more action. Songs like 'Baby', 'Nightclubbing' and 'Dum Dum Boys' really capture that drunken, woozy, underground European atmosphere. It's a perfect record."""

"This is the unedited and unadulterated version of the stories that made up Isherwood’s books Goodbye To Berlin and Mr Norris Changes Trains, which were the source material for the play I Am A Camera and later the musical Cabaret. I find it fascinating that Isherwood still writes about himself in the third person. An interesting literary device, yet it feels like a smokescreen and leaves you wondering how much more there is to tell."