Patrick McGuinness talks to Tiffany Murray

The writer introduces his beautiful memoir that evolved out of stories the author told his children: stories about the Belgian border town of Bouillon, where his mother came from, and where he has been going three times a year since he was a child. This town of eccentrics, of charm, menace and wonder, is recreated beautifully – ‘Most of my childhood,’ he says, ‘feels more real to me now than it did then’.