"Every corner of the earth was represented here," he reflects at one point.
"Think how much better this world is than hell," he reflects at one point.
"How can I be 50," he reflects at one point, "when I only just began?" Reading Linda Grant (whose previous novel, "The Clothes on Their Backs," was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize) is like spending time in the company of a smart, sharp-tongued friend with firm convictions.
His sister, now dead, really had no life at all, he reflects, as a result of being caught between warring parents.
What most disturbs Mount is the increasing gap between the super-rich and the mass of society – a separation that he sees reflected at the rioting end of the social ladder.
The group's many legal and judicial victories, he reflected, "were at best surface changes; they were not substantive changes".
But some of them, might just make the journey, sometimes people you don't expect," he reflected, nodding at the group in a huddle, them against the world.
However, he reflected that, "At the time, you feel you're doing something good; you don't see the bigger picture.
Sitting at the kitchen table in his Holland Park house, dressed casually in a flowing white sports shirt that would not be out of place at the beach, Mr. Gray chain-smoked as he reflected on how, at 67, he had found his place in that theatrical canon.
