I have deliberately left Sylvester and Julia's appearances to the reader's imagination.

I was sent to a finishing school, which didn't last long when mother found out how badly chaperoned we were. Then I 'came out' before going to a domestic science school.

Imagination which comes into play in falling in love is different from any other. Certainly in my case, and I've fallen in love all my life, one imagines the person to be as you want them to be. They frequently turn out to be someone different, for better or worse.

In my eighties, my best friends are in their fifties, and I have many friends at university. It keeps one young, and up with the vocabulary. That's terribly important, especially for a writer.

I never really know the title of a book until it's finished.

My father was a soldier and my mother was a great mover. She once counted up how many places she had lived in during the first 25 years of her marriage and it came to 20.

I remember the evacuee children from towns and cities throwing stones at the farm animals. When we explained that if you did that you wouldnt have any milk, meat or eggs, they soon learned to respect the animals.