The district police commissioner in Rawlpindi tried to get me to cancel it in case there was a riot. It was a risk I was prepared to take and it all passed off peacefully. McMillan reading his work in Mexico City represents a different kind of risk. Yet I got a standing ovation. There won't be a standing ovation tonight, because it's not that kind of gig.
Pictures line the walls.
They are drenched in colour, sometimes tempered by dark and brooding backgrounds. Flowers of shocking pink seem poised to burst out of the canvas. Bright blood trickles down the human face of a bull with startling blue eyes. Skulls and masks, so much a part of Mexican culture, stare from the canvas with haunting expressions. They are the work not of a Mexican, but of another son of Barnsley.