there used to be a deep-level air raid shelter by the underground station, and that the entrance to it is still there. Since I was setting a large part of the novel in a place that was entirely new to me, it was comforting, if you like, to locate a part of the novel in an area with which I was more familiar. For the purposes of one of the plot lines, the novel had to be set before 1969, and I worked back from there. Kalden is intelligent and sympathetic and would have been an attractive hero in any time and place. Would your story in The Road Back have been the same in a different environment, e.g. 1960s swinging London? That's a very interesting question, Alison! For Kalden, there would have been little change -- it was only after the gates of tourism were opened in Ladakh, which was in 1974, that there was any significant change in the lives of the Ladakhi. I'm tempted to say that Patricia's story would have been different in a later period of time, that she was almost certain to have been affected by the social changes that were taking place, but I'm not sure that I would be right.  Just as her father, the Major, was a product of his social environment and regimental background, Patricia, too, was a product of that same environment since she lived within it and had rather turned her back on the wider society. I think