Eventually, he concludes that oral sex is probably OK so long as a couple are married, and it leads to full sex with the possibility of procreation So, no, a blow job for a blow job’s sake is not on. “I was converted by Margaret Thatcher and her faith in family values. Now, though, the party has gone much, much too far the other way.”Aren’t there any moral issues that vex you? I ask “No,” he says. “The Catholic Church stands for family, marriage, fidelity, children. He stood for affairs, mistresses, abandoning children.” He used to be very friendly with Martin Amis until Martin left his wife for someone else.

He is very much A Catholic Writer, one who even, at times, out-Graham Greenes Graham Greene He is not, as it happens, a great admirer of Greene His Catholicism was, he argues, quite bogus. He won’t have anything to do with him now.He is a man of total moral certitude, the sort of man who would pick Anne Widdecombe from behind the screen, should he ever go on Blind Date The ordination of women is bad Homosexuality is bad Abortion is bad Contraception is bad Feminism is bad Sex before marriage is bad The Tory party used to be OK, but now even that’s gone bad. Piers is not just a writer who happens to be Catholic like, say, David Lodge or William Trevor. Through taking on the identity of a priest, Michael finds God and, as a consequence, his own identity.The fact Piers can make this a thoroughly gripping read is a tribute to his narrative panache, his cool prose and his skill at using his beliefs to serve his characters, rather than vice versa, and killing them stone dead. This is a shame, I think, because his novels (The Upstart, The Free Frenchman, A Married Man) should be what he is best-known for.Knights of the Cross is about a bloke called Michael Latham, an employee at the BBC’s monitoring unit in Caversham, who is both a divorcee and a great disappointment to himself.

To cut a very complicated story short, he has to take on the identity of a Russian priest, and infiltrate the Knights of the Cross, a sinister, Catholic, charitable order, to investigate the death of someone he once knew. Of course, the book is dominated by the brooding presence of God, and the ending is not so much an ending as an epiphany. They have given him his big house in Holland Park and, probably, whatever fame he has. He is called upon mostly, he says, when Paul Johnson is unavailable. “In fact,” he says, “I always know when Paul’s gone away, because my phone starts to ring.” Alive was an international best seller The Daily Mail pieces are consolingly well paid.

Although, that said, Knights of the Cross is a very good book.Although Piers Paul Read has written 13 novels he is still, probably, best known for Alive – his non-fiction account of the Andes air crash survivors – and those regular, Daily Mail right-wing rants. In his latest novel, Knights of the Cross, a naked woman is described as having a pubic region like a tarantula. This is not the friendliest of descriptions, I am sure you’ll agree. There wasn’t even a good reason for it.” I think, at some level, Piers might be rather frightened of women And sex. It was no more than a severe gale that uprooted our trees, cut off our electricity and gave roof repairers their best business for a generation.
Hurricane force, on the Beaufort scale, is more than 75mph – which means a speed of more than 75mph in the general motion of the wind.

Piers, of course, disagrees.”But didn’t you see the opening episode of Dance To the Music of Time?,” he cries “It began with a naked girl opening a door. A naked girl!” Well, I say, some people think naked women a very fine and beautiful thing “Yes But there’s a place for it And that was not the place. Piers is a famously stern moralist whereas I am a hopelessly cheerful immoralist, the sort who is exceedingly keen on the sins of the flesh, who thinks gay couples are great because they really look after their gardens.
In fact, I tell Piers, whenever he writes one of his Daily Mail pieces about telly having been given over to “filth” and “sex, sex and more sex,” I always get really cross. If there is so much sex on TV, how come I never get to see any of it? Whenever I turn it on, it seems to be vets, vets and more vets, and never even vets and sex, which would, in my opinion, go a long way to making Animal Hospital a great deal more lively. Homosexuals, abortion, feminism, sex before marriage – all are bad The Tory party used to be OK, but now that’s gone bad. He could go on and on, and he frequently does in the right-wing press.