When Peter Englund came in to the Guardian earlier this year to talk about his novelistic history of the first world war, he also spoke about his role as the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy – the secretive body which chooses the winner of the Nobel prize for literature.

He talks about the difficulty of balancing literary quality and cultural significance, the Academy's undercover translation project, the awkward lack of women laureates and whether Philip Roth will ever win the Nobel prize.