'My dad, a decorated Spitfire pilot in "My WWII, gave me a passion for fighting the important fights. My mum, a terrific writer who met dad when she was writing her thesis on his father (my grandfather was the first Māori Bishop of New Zealand), gave me a love of words and an awe for their power.
‘When I was ten years old, my big brother Bruce was doing psychology at university, and in the holidays after his first year, he brought home The Clinical Textbook of Abnormal Psychology. I have no idea why anyone let a ten-year-old read this deeply disturbing book – but I devoured it, cover to cover. When Bruce went back to university, I hid it so he couldn’t take it. The curiosity provoked in me from reading that textbook is still the most important tool in my toolkit as a writer – acuriosity about the human mind, why we do the strange, inexplicable, often wonderful, sometimes terrible things that we do.
‘I’ve been a filmmaker and screenwriter for 25 years, much more recently a published
