Men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, and clever.

I was born in Norwich in 1946, and educated in England, Zimbabwe, and Australia, before my family settled in North Wales.

After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.

A story, to me, has a particular sprite, like the angel of the spirit of that story - and it's my job to attend to what it wants to do.

I'm just trying to wake up - I'm so afraid of sleeping all my life and then dying - I want to wake up first. I wouldn't care if it was just for an hour, as long as I was properly alive and awake.

On a cold, fretful afternoon in early October, 1872, a hansom cab drew up outside the offices of Lockhart and Selby, Shipping Agents, in the financial heart of London, and a young girl got out and paid the driver. She was a person of sixteen or so--alone, and uncommonly pretty. She was slender and pale, and dressed in mourning, with a black bonnet under which she tucked back a straying twist of blond hair that the wind had teased loose. She had unusually dark brown eyes for one so fair. Her name was Sally Lockhart; and within fifteen minutes, she was going to kill a man.

We need to ensure that children are not forced to waste their time on barren rubbish.