Nick Drake – Bryter Later
When people ask what's the last piece of music you'd like to hear before you die – which is a bit much, given the year that I've had – I'd say Northern Sky by Nick Drake. It sounds almost like it's playing inside your head. It's such an unbelievably beautiful song, and so beautifully played. Of course, I wrote a book with the same name [a 2006 novel about an university lecturer who moves back home, and tries to rejoin his old band], but I wouldn't be trying to promote it at the same time. Well, I wouldn't be there.

I've always been a bit obsessed with the photos of Nick Drake outside the factory in Battersea, where he's leaning against the wall, watching people of the city rush by. I love the countryside, but I wouldn't want to live there – I need that life of the city around me, and I think often of those images when I'm observing people. I love how's he's both of the city but not quite of it as well. You get that sense in his music too. It's familiar, but also travelling somewhere else.