I was born in a small suburb of Ilford in a rather nasty housing estate that my mother despised. She had grown up in the country, so when the war came and I was evacuated to Wales she thought I was much better off there.

I like stirring the pot - I think it's part of my duty, to shake people up a bit - make them look at things in a different way.

People who don't read seem to me mysterious. I don't know how they think or learn about other people. Novels are a very important part of our education.

I grew up on a suburban street with lace curtains and dull neighbours, so I made up stories to tell my friend, in which they became serial killers and burglars. She told her mother, who then told mine.

Children often have a much stronger concept of morality than adults.

I wanted to be a war reporter - scrabbling around, exposing things. I didn't want to go to university, I wanted to get a job, but Auntie Beryl said I should go to Oxford.

People's lives are in the care of the railways when they get on a train. The railways should remember that.