Which fiction and nonfiction writers — playwrights, critics, journalists, poets — inspired you most early in your career? And which writers working today do you most admire?

I’d have to begin with A. J. P. Taylor, who was the first historian I ever read and who inspired me to believe a) that historical writing should never be dull, but should bristle with irony and paradox, and b) that historical knowledge is a prerequisite for worthwhile commentary on contemporary matters. Another major influence at the early stage was Norman Stone. But it wasn’t just historians who inspired me as I was starting out. As a sixth-former (high school senior), I lapped up Tom Stoppard’s plays, painted a mural inspired by the poetry of Thom Gunn and read compulsively the reviews of punk bands in the New Musical Express. At Oxford, I came under the influence of The Spectator, then edited by Charles Moore, one of the most gifted English journalists of his generation and now Margaret Thatcher’s biographer. But my favorite writer at that time was Flann O’Brien, the great Irish humorist. I have always liked his description of himself as “a spoilt Proust.” No one writing in English today is remotely as funny as O’Brien. Only the French can still produce real men of letters. Chapeau, therefore, to Bernard-Henri Lévy and Michel Houellebecq.

Which historians and biographers do you most admire?

Amongst those currently writing, Simon Schama stands out as the Dickens of modern historiography: bewilderingly erudite and prolific, passionate in his enthusiasms and armed with the complete contents of the thesaurus. We agree to disagree about politics. I have also hugely admired Anne Applebaum for her trilogy on the Gulag, the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe (“Iron Curtain”) and, most recently, the Ukrainian famine (“Red Famine”). Walter Isaacson has established himself as the great American biographer of our time. “Leonardo da Vinci” is his best book, I think. Whereas the earlier books were pure journalism, he is now showing academic scholars how to write accessibly about subtle and even recondite subject matter. I read quite a number of biographies while researching “The Square and the Tower.” My favorite was probably Michael Ignatieff’s on Isaiah Berlin, which led me into the vast, delightful rabbit warren of Berlin’s correspondence.

And which novelists do you especially enjoy reading?

Everyone has at least one vice. Mine is reading (and re-reading) 19th-century novels. It’s hard to pick just a couple of favorites but I unreservedly adore Wilkie Collins (e.g., “The Moonstone”) and Theodor Fontane (“Der Stechlin”).

Which genres do you avoid?

Historical fiction, especially of recent vintage. The brain simply cannot compartmentalize. I noticed while writing “The Pity of War” that I was subconsciously drawing on Pat Barker’s “The Ghost Road” novels as if they were the real thing. Since then I’ve abstained completely. In any case, I would much rather read an authentic contemporary diary than a work of historical fiction. A good example is the diary of Ivan Maisky, the long-serving Soviet ambassador in London. Gabriel Gorodetsky’s edition — abridged and unabridged — is a work for the ages.

How do you like to read? Paper or electronic? One book at a time or several simultaneously? Morning or night?

I’ve tried electronic but I can’t read on a screen for pleasure. It has to be the paper-and-ink book, preferably a robust paperback. From an early age, I’ve liked to have five books on the go at a time — that was the maximum number one could borrow from the Ayr Public Library. As for when I read, always at night. In the morning, there are too many distractions.