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Sixty seconds with Robert Goddard...
Robert Goddard was born in Hampshire and qualified as a teacher before working as a local government officer for ten years. He became a writer out of a desire to tell tightly plotted stories, something he felt was lacking in much contemporary fiction in the 1970s and 1980s. He describes himself as an eager student of history and has now written over 20 novels, many with a historical angle.
RTE: Describe yourself in a sentence?
Goddard: I'm a natural born pessimist who's been repeatedly confounded by the happy course of my life.
RTE: What's the one record you'd take to a desert island?
Goddard: A recording of the Hancock's Half Hour episode, Sunday Afternoon at Home. It's human voices I'd miss more than music and these voices always make me laugh.
RTE: What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Goddard: A writer, though, naturally, given my pessimism, I never expected it to happen.
RTE: Who's your oldest friend?
Goddard: Someone I went to school and university with who happily shares my love of beer, cricket and conspiracy theories.
RTE: If I ruled the world...
Goddard: Dropping chewing gum on the pavement would become a hanging offence.
RTE: Which book do you wish you'd written?
Goddard: The Para Handy stories of Neil Munro. Then we could have some more of them. 99 just isn't enough!
RTE: What makes you angry?
Goddard: Phoning any large organization and getting fobbed off with a computer answering system that tells me my call is important to them (clearly untrue) or that they're experiencing unprecedented demand (clearly also untrue, since if it was really unprecedented they wouldn't have had occasion to record such a message).
RTE: Name your five dream dinner party guests.
Goddard: I'd just like to gather some old friends together, although perhaps Professor Roger Penrose could join us and explain quantum theory to me at last.
RTE: Who would you least like to be stuck in a lift with?
Goddard: There's a long list of candidates, but Alistair Campbell wins by a short ego.
RTE: What inspired you to start writing?
Goddard: Reading. I knew from pretty early on that I wanted to create as well as consume.
RTE: Where would you most like to live?
Goddard: Where I am is just fine.
RTE: Sum up your latest book in no more than 12 words.
Goddard: There's no such thing as easy money, as our hero finds out.
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