I consider myself extremely lucky to have been born and raised in London, and to have had on my doorstep this most fascinating of cities with so many relics of 2000 years of history still to be found in its streets. One of my greatest pleasures was, and still is, exploring London.

Happiness don't ask to see who you be afore her sits down at your table. 'Er comes and sits with them as know how to welcome her and keep her the willing guest.

It is to live that requires courage, not to die.

We spent the first night of our honeymoon in a country hotel, with Tudor architecture oak beams, and floors which sloped, of the Queen-Elizabeth-Slept-Here variety. There were old tennis-courts - the Tudor kind where Henry VIII was said to have played; and gardens filled with winter heather, jasmine and yellow chrysanthemums. [...] So that first night together was spent in the ancient bedroom with the tiny leaded paned windows, through which shafts of moonlight touched the room with a dreamlike radiance [...]

People always grumbled. If things went well they wanted them to go better. Give them comfort and they wanted luxuries.

I found that married life gave me the necessary freedom to follow an ambition which had been with me since childhood; and so I started to write in earnest.

But our lives were not as they seemed, were they, Sophia? No one's life ever is.