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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Michael Segalov

Simon Sebag Montefiore: ‘I worked down a South African goldmine at 17’

Historian Simon Sebag Montefiore.
Historian Simon Sebag Montefiore: ‘Trust, openness and flexibility – these are the ingredients of a relationship that prospers’ Photograph: Getty Images

Being told my books are boring is my greatest fear. If anything, I put excessive violence and sex in them to ensure it’s a charge I’ll never face.

My childhood was eccentric and wonderful. Mum was a novelist, my father a GP and psychiatrist. His surgery was in the basement of our house, where all sorts of dramas – both medical and psychological – played out. It’s from that, I think, that I got my fascination with how people live.

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