With a handful of fine novels behind her, and a pair of television adaptations, Sarah Waters' work is populist but never dumbed-down, always meticulously researched, gripping and entertaining. Although Waters is known for historical novels set in the Victorian era, her latest book, The Night Watch moves forward in time and is set during and after World War II. Waters took some time from her publicity schedule to talk to us about, what else, writing, books and history.

How do you manage to write? By this I mean: how do you manage to generate these complicated, plot-twisty, heavy-on-the-characterisation novels in your brain, and then splurge them out into bestsellers? Is it headache-inducing stress, or pleasure all the way?
Well, I always think of it as being like those monkeys and the typewriters: put me in a room with a computer for a couple of years, and I'm bound to come up with something. It's my full-time job, after all, and I work quite hard at it - I wish it was just a question of splurging it all out, but The Night Watch in particular was very labour-intensive. It's more character-led than the other books, so I had to sort of write it as I went along (as opposed to coming up with the skeleton of a plot first, as I'd done with the other books). I wrote lots of scenes, and even whole chapters, which I then re-wrote or rejected. There were certainly moments of pleasure - those moments of fluent writing, when you feel like the force is with you - but on the whole it was pretty stressful.
 
What is it about historical settings that appeals to you? Would you ever consider writing a book that is set in the present, or even the future?
I was a historian (sort of) before I was a novelist, and it's always been the past that has intrigued and inspired me - more particularly, our distance from the past, the strangeness of the past. I think that when you're writing about issues around gender and sexuality, it's fascinating to take those issues into the past - into what is really a radically different culture - and see how they play out there. Why would I want to write about lesbians living in South London, popping up to the Candy Bar for a beer? I do that myself, there seems nothing mysterious about it. But to write about, say, lesbians living in 1940s London - the secrecy of it, the anxieties of it - its particular fashions and codes - I find that really exciting. But I may end up setting a book in the present day, I suppose, if the right kind of story comes along.

What don't you like about your writing?
I sometimes get frustrated with my own writing style. I think every writer has a fairly narrow fund of strategies and tricks; if one of my characters, say, has to get on a bus and go to Clapham, go into a shop and buy a bun, there's a fairly predictable way in which I will write that - the pace and movement of it all. I find it really hard to break out of those habits. It's like trying to change your handwriting or the way you walk - impossible, really. Also, of course, there are just weakness to my writing that depress and embarass me. I've never read any of my books once they've been published - I just can't bear it.
 
Who and what are the lesbian authors and books that you enjoy the most?
To be honest, I haven't read much lesbian fiction lately. I don't read as much contemporary fiction as I ought. I do like Ali Smith; I also recently discovered the American writer Michelle Tea, and I think she's fab. But I can think of older lesbian books which I've really loved: Ellen Galford's 'oll Cutpurse, Isabel Miller's Patience and Sarah, Elana Dykewomon's Beyond the Pale, Patricia Highsmith's The Price of Salt. I also have a soft spot for novels in which the lesbians are completely horrible to each other, or end up dead: Molly Keane's Devoted Ladies and Compton Mackenzie's Extraordinary Women are two of my favourites.
 
What's next for you?
Right now, what's next for me is a three-month long publicity tour, here and abroad. So I haven't given tons of thought to the next book, yet; I'm going to wait until I'm home again and things are a bit calmer before I start serious work on it. But I think I will stay in the post-war period for it - maybe move slightly into the 1950s.