Ian McEwan looks a bit shellshocked as he steps out of the first rehearsal of For You, the opera he has just written with the composer Michael Berkeley. No words of mine have been sung for 20 years, he explains. And, on the whole, it doesn't suit novelists to be collaborators. We are so used to playing God by ourselves.

But surely McEwan has collaborated quite a bit in films not least of his own novels, including Atonement? Yes, but movies are odd collaborations because writers are so disposable. The last movie I wrote I got sacked from, and it still got made without me. So I thought: That's enough of that! Opera is a much classier collaboration.

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