A Private Place could not have been written had I myself not been to a progressive co-educational boarding school, Bedales. You can read more about my experience of this in the journalism section. The scandal that brings down Knotshead is, however, similar to one that closed another leading school of this kind, Dartington; and features of life at a number of other such schools are incorporated. Physically, Knotshead is based on Stowe with its classical temples and gardens.

The benefits of co-education tend to be accepted without question in Britain, particularly by those mortified by experiences at single-sex schools. What I was attacking was the principle of such establishments, which can only be upheld by parents whom, as Alice says, "either suffer from total amnesia about their own adolescence or else have the sex-drive of the giant panda." Co-educational boarding schools make sex a compulsory part of the syllabus: the fact that if you're caught in flagrante you'll be expelled only adds to its attractions. Because a school is a small community, it is impossible for any relationships to remain private. (The title is of course, from Andrew Marvell's Invitation to His Coy Mistress, which goes "the grave's a fine and private place/ But none I think do there embrace.") Those who resist it, or who are judged unattractive, suffer psychologically for a very long time after - in some cases, for life.

The plot is actually a re-telling of the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, (hence Johnny Tore) with Alice as Ariadne and Grub (whose real name derives from Dionysus) as the god who rescues her. Those familiar with this myth may have fun tracing its twists and turns in the story. The painting of Ariadne's abandonment by Claude in the Wallace Collection is my own invention, although a magnificent one on the same subject by Titian is in the National Gallery. Grub's family, the Viners, who appear in this novel for the first time are also characters in subsequent novels. The fairy-tale aspect of families with three brothers has always intrigued me. Just as Emma Kenward, Andrew Evenlode and the Anstey family crop up in novels after 'Foreign Bodies', I found that I wanted to write more about the Viner family. Tom became the hero of A Vicious Circle, and their mother Ruth has an important part to play in In A Dark Wood. They represent the good side to liberal, middle-class morality - a morality which strives to reconcile what often seems irreconcilable, which is honest and brave and imaginative - whereas the way Knotshead is run shows the bad side to liberalism, with its deep-rooted hypocrisy, snobbery and dishonesty.

It was written as the Gulf War was being fought, and another kind of battle was raging in Britain - the battle not just to unseat the Conservative from power but within the Left. I wanted to suggest this through describing the battle between Romanticism and Classicism, of which Grub is an exponent of the former and Alice the latter. The landscape in which the pupils of Knotshead fight is one of Classicism overlaid with Romanticism, with Nature ultimately gaining the upper hand. In the end, as Nietzsche suggested, neither should win but both remain in balance. Grub needs Alice, and she him - but whether she will ever accept this is another question.

I have been amused by the assumptions that Alice must be a portrait of myself. She is categorically not, though I too did Latin A level. I was much more like Grub, who shares my red hair, left-handedness, half-Jewish ancestry and love of bad jokes.