When Lee Child collects me from a Lake District train station in his yellow Prius one sunny afternoon, I can’t miss him. Standing 6ft 4ins (one inch shorter than his creation Jack Reacher ), the British author looks gaunt, rangy and resilient, like a rancher. He and his wife Jane do actually own a ranch in Wyoming, one of five US properties including a vast Manhattan brownstone they bought just last year, but he’s getting out fast. The day after Donald Trump won the presidential election, Child flew to the UK to buy a house.

“We misjudged it,” he says ruefully as we pull up to a country pub. It’s a shame he doesn’t narrate his audiobooks because his flinty mid-Atlantic voice would be perfect. “We thought that it was going to be OK in the US. And then it wasn’t. I love New York and I c

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