“When you’re starting out, everything seems so desperately urgent. It’s not just ‘Will I ever get a job?’ but ‘Do people like me?’ and ‘Will I find someone to love who loves me back?’ All that confusion and anxiety... As I’ve got older my motto has become this: ‘Very little matters and almost nothing matters very much.’

“There’s enough pressure on young people at the best of times to set off on a career path, but in the current climate it must feel like everything’s stacked against them. If it’s any consolation, I wandered around like a lost soul for ten years before getting myself on track [discouraged by his father from becoming a journalist, Smith qualified as an accountant in his native Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, before trying his hand at writing]. Don’t despair. There’s a role out there for everyone. It just sometimes takes an awful lot of searching for.

“I’m an optimistic man, but the one time I was left totally drained and done in is when I lost Danielle in 1999 after a six-year battle with cancer [she became Smith’s third wife in 1971]. I thought I would never regain my interest in life. But if you’re lucky, time carries the pain away and your strength gradually returns, allowing you to move on [he has since married again]. Death comes to all of us, but that’s no reason to spend your later years shutting down in contemplation of it.”

The pearl: “Look ahead and not behind you. Don’t waste time with regrets. Carry forward all the good things that you’ve done and leave the baggage by the road.”

Wilbur Smith’s latest novel, Assegai, is published by Macmillan (£18.99)

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