In Cambridge some years ago, I went into a terrific secondhand bookshop, picked up a collected version of John Donne's poems and opened it to a very well-thumbed page. It was a lewd--almost pornographic--elegy that had never made it into any school anthologies that I'd seen. I bought the book and read it from cover to cover . . . Until then, I'd seen him mainly as a love poet because of the fabulous poems he wrote to the woman he eloped with, Ann More. But this was different--much more exciting. With Donne's words buzzing in my head, I went into St Paul's Cathedral to look at his effigy. There, I discovered that it was the only monument to survive the Great Fire of 1666 intact. This stirred up a wild dream that became the opening scene in my novel Conceit, which is about John Donne and Ann More, and their daughter, Pegge. So, happy browsing everyone. You never know where it will take you!

from "The Joys of Bookshop Browsing," The Guardian, Review section, February 27, 2010, p. 19 (print edition) and The Guardian Books Blog, February 22, 1010.