We chat to author Tim Lott, who lives in Kensal Green with his wife Rachael (pictured here with daughters Lydia and Esme)

What do you love about your neighbourhood?
The extraordinarily nice people who live there.

Any pet peeves?
Just silly stuff – shootings, stabbings – that kind of thing.

Describe your perfect weekend…
Breakfast at Gracelands, lunch at Miro’s, dinner at 8 Station Terrace.
And a lone walk in Kensal Green Cemetery looking for names for characters in my next novel.

Dream dinner party dish with local ingredients?
Salsicce in agrodolce, with sausages from L’Angolo.

Support any local charities?
My four daughters.

If you were MP what would you change?
I would introduce the death penalty for pavement foulers. Owners, not dogs.

Top tip to someone who’s just moved here?
Have children. Without them, you will be branded a pariah and drummed into exile.

Juicy local gossip?
Simon London, who runs the Seventh Heaven Quiz at the Masons Arms, is a sleeper for the Russian Intelligence Services, without the knowledge of his wife, Jo. Maybe.

‘The Scent of Dried Roses: One family and the end of English Suburbia, an elegy’, 1996, his acclaimed memoir.

‘White City Blue’, 1999, won the Whitbread Award for Best First Novel.

‘Rumours of a Hurricane‘, 2002, is a tragic and hilarious account of life in the Eighties.

‘The Love Secrets of Don Juan’, 2003, ‘The jolliest book I’ve read in a long time. Lott delivers depth with lightness’ – The Spectator

‘The Seymour Tapes’, 2005, ‘Clever, sinister, suspenseful’ – The Times Literary Supplement.

‘Fearless’, 2007, is his most recent novel, is a fictional fable available in adult and children’s versions.