“You cannot survive as a civilisation in a state of cringing shame,” says Lionel Shriver, as she launches into a broadside at the self-loathing that people are supposed to feel about the colonial sins of the West.

“I am very suspicious of this whole pose of guilt,” she says, explaining that it’s usually used by white people to “assert superiority over other white people”. I’m with the writer of We Need to Talk About Kevin at her house outside Lisbon; she moved there in October after living in the UK for 25 years. She’s not holding back.

The Telegraph London