The award-winning English author and literary critic talks to Georgina Godwin about his 30-year career. His latest novel, ‘The Young Pretender’, is about the rise, fall and attempted comeback of long-forgotten child actor William Henry West Betty in Georgian Britain. Arditti often deals with spirituality and sexuality in his work and was described by Philip Pullman as a ‘chronicler of the rewards and pitfalls of present-day faith’.