Thanks to a fellowship from the Hawthornden Foundation, I’m back at the 15th century castle just north of Edinburgh where in 2018 I finished writing The Latecomers. The castle has been renovated since then, bringing in serious heat and modernized plumbing and (for better and worse) hi-octane wifi. The renovation, of course, required massive scaffolding which broke a lot of tiles on the slate roof. There’s a steeplejack outside my window fixing them today. I opened my window and asked Neil about his work–and came away grateful that my job can be done in a chair.