My favourite novelists are repressed homosexuals who write in roundabout, elegant prose. Henry James and E. M. Forster are funny in a muffled way, prodding staid characters towards tragic or comic conclusions respectively. A vase or an engagement may be broken during the course of the plot, but no one gets unnecessarily continental or teary about it. When the novels finish, no matter what's gone on with the groundskeeper or the Italian sleazebag, it is made perfectly . . .

Eamonn got fat; Lewis got thin. Chris manages a Poundstretcher and dreams of becoming a policeman. Jane is married and is giving birth to her first baby next month. She was the first girl I kissed. Facebook is a funny thing. The popular perception of my relationship with Wales is that I burned all bridges with it. When I was 16, I left my childhood town of Pontypridd for Cumbria while everyone else stayed behind. Our lives diverged at this point: I lived in a bedsit, . . .