What has been your best financial decision? In my childhood I thought one of the chief functions of humanity was to worry about money. One by Garry Shead is worth $50,000 – not worth coming to Australia to nick it! Does money make you happy? The most valuable is a painting of spinifex grass by aboriginal artist Gloria Petyarre. We had to borrow more and sell it when finished, then settle bills, and we found that irregularities had occurred. In 1995 friends asked us to join them in building a guesthouse in the Blue Mountains.

I stopped trying to find something to save me from writing’s liquidity squeezes. I once owned an apartment in New York when I taught at NYU. I sometimes swan along taking income for granted and have been lucky with some projects. For me there seems to be nothing in between. Writers either have a cash flow problem or you’ve run up a tax bill. An old writer told me a writer’s life is “mincemeat and champagne”. Prudence is required to manage your financials for when liquidity squeezes it’s a gift. Novelists are like farmers who sell a wheat crop and get a sizeable amount of money in one hit, if they’re lucky. Increasingly I use debit cards as you know where you are. Generally, I’m relieved of it by accountants. When money gets into my possession it can’t wait to depart. The charms of retail didn’t quite capture me. I wanted to escape stupefying jobs, working in department stores. On one withering 40☌-plus day, bottles were exploding on the truck. In holidays I worked in a cordial factory delivering soft drinks to the migrant hostel.

We moved from the bush to Homebush, Sydney, on the edge of a swamp, near abattoirs and a biscuit factory the railway went past our front door. There was always money for books, which my mother had been deprived of in her childhood. They didn’t drink and economised on clothing everyone we knew was in the same situation. My parents made sacrifices to send us to what they considered a good school, and everyone was aware of the struggle. How did your childhood influence your attitude to money?

Today he lives in Manly, Australia, with his wife, Judith. Three of his 39 novels were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 1993 it was made into the film Schindler’s List, which won seven Oscars (including Best Picture), seven Baftas and three Golden Globes. Thomas Keneally AO, 85, is an Australian writer who found fame in 1982 when his book Schindler’s Ark won the Booker Prize.

Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally