In an Appendix, in conversation with the author in London in February 2005, Graham Swift comments extensively on his fiction, past and future, as well as the laborious process of exploration which constitutes writing a novel. Graham Swift documents the disillusionment of late twentieth-century British urban middle class as it strives to recover after losing faith in myths of power and progress. Swifts seven novels to date tell family stories: intergenerational strife, marital disharmony and the inability to communicate are related to significant moments in nineteenth- and twentieth-century history, especially the two world wars. As a postmodern author, Swift self-consciously pays homage to tradition through polyphony and metafiction: in his novels the moral imperatives of nineteenth-century realism are combined with fragmented tales of alienation typical of modernism and the questioning of representation characteristic of contemporary fiction. From History to Storytelling focuses on S