A novelist, memoirist, critic, poet and screenwriter, James Lasdun has created a memorable body of work exploring the themes of existential dread, reputational damage and surveillance. The son of a well-known British architect, Lasdun is perhaps best known for his 2013 memoir about being stalked by one of his writing students, Give Me Everything You Have. In our conversation, James spoke to me about his childhood in London, as the son of Jews who had converted to Anglicanism without ever quite managing to become Christians; about his love of mythology; and about the dark fears and obsessions that run through his fiction and his non-fiction.