There is something about emerging from lockdown from the dread beast COVID that is akin to the end of a war. The bombs have stopped, blackout has been repealed, and despite never-to-be-forgotten casualties, we have emerged, blinking like moles, into the sunlight, desperate for a real coffee and no more whale meat fritters.

It has no cure. 70,000 Australians currently live with it. Twenty per cent of them — that’s one in five people, like me — are under 50. As is the case with 10 per cent of those 32 people diagnosed everyday, I was under 40 when I was told I had it. Like my hero, Michael J. Fox, I have had it since I was 29. Admittedly also like Mike Fox, I didn’t talk about it publicly for quite some time, both out of fear of acceptance and lack of understanding of my own condition.

Little do you realise one day you will be staring down the barrel of four best-selling novels, a potential international movie deal, and yes, the barrel of a rifle. Then you come across a man — or rather, two men — who essentially change the course of your life. One of them is licensed to kill, and the other one wrote him the Walther PPK with which to do it. Bond and the man behind the series of spy novels, Ian Fleming, introduced Chris to the world of espionage, duty, danger and bucking the s

An exclusive interview with Rabia Siddique

The Wise and Mostly Infinitely Kind Ways of An Ordinary Man, Aged 74