Shortly after it was published, I wound up defending it to a journalist who had loved my previous novel, Neverwhere, particularly its social allegories. He had turned Stardust upside down and shaken it, looking for social allegories, and found absolutely nothing of any good purpose. ‘What’s it for?’ he had asked, which is not a question you expect to be asked when you write fiction for a living. ‘It’s a fairy tale,’ I told him. ‘It’s like an ice cream. It’s to make you feel happy when you finish it.’
