What made you decide to write a novel set in the Whitehouse, and how would you say the book is different from just any other political tale?
John Stewart: I wrote a novel some years ago, if fact, during the latter part of the Clinton administration. This was overtaken by events and abandoned, but after writing Visitors, I decided to exploit my previous research and follow up Visitors with a book on the American scene. Visitors is more an allegory than a novel, but The President is a political novel. What makes it different you ask? My answer is that political intrigue takes second place to issues of economic and social reform.

Throughout the novel there is rich detail regarding the ‘goings on’ of the Whitehouse and those inside it. Did you have to do much research to get the details correct?
John Stewart: Did I do much research? Not really: a life long interest in American affairs - and watching too many movies - was enough. Also a visit to Washington helped.

The President John Duncan seems to be a man of honour and integrity, a man with true principles, even in the dirty world of politics. Is he based on a real person, or an ideal?
John Stewart: The President is portraying an ideal, but he is not idealistic. He is showing that the ‘dirty world of politics’ doesn’t need to be dirty. His character is not based on a living or historical President.

How did you become interested in the work of Henry George?
John Stewart: When I came to London I joined economic classes, run by the School of Economic Science, and was immediately enthralled by the simplicity of the basic principles. The teaching of Henry George is not just about an economic model but rather the key to tackling poverty. ‘We would simply take for the community what belongs to the community - the value that attaches to land by the growth of the community; leave to the individual all that belongs to the individual.’ These words of George, himself, put his economic teaching in a nutshell.

The book very much has a moralistic theme running through it. Is this how you would prefer to see the politicians of the US and the UK behave; and did the state of politics (and humanity in general) today influence your writing?
John Stewart: I feel that when self-interest is not modified by moralistic principles, society suffers. By moralistic behaviour I don’t mean some Victorian strait jacket, but the duty to treat others as you yourself would wish to be treated. This, to a degree, is something the majority do naturally, and, as leaders of society, one would hope political leaders would be examples.

You dedicate the book to "those who strive to keep the flame of justice burning". To whom do you allude and why?
John Stewart: Many unsung people labour in this field. Henry George was the perfect example. Not content with a ‘sticking plaster’ approach George shone light on the causes of the poverty and misery that surrounded him. For him, the people deserved justice and not merely charity.

Having incorporated the theme of social justice in both this work and your previously well received novel The Visitors, will you continue along this vein, and, if so, what do you have in mind for your next work?
John Stewart: There is another book, more coal-face, as it were, that explores the difficulties of application in regard to the principles outlined in the previous books. But a book is not published until it’s published!