When children have grieving parents it's also common for them to feel an obligation to cheer them up and make them happy.

I hated Sundays when I was growing up in Streatham, south London. Everything closed down and stopped.

Childhood didn't have a big influence on me, really - in fact I spent most of it plotting how to escape.

You could say Shakespeare is so extraordinary precisely because he was so ordinary. He had all the usual anxieties and understandings of what it is to have children, lose children, get married, struggle to make a living and so on.

Like many Catholics, I was very affected by the personality of Jesus and that impression, pious as it was, has stayed with me.

When children have grieving parents it's also common for them to feel an obligation to cheer them up and make them happy.

Jesus is absolutely at the centre of Western civilisation and part of my fascination with him is, why? What is it about this particular man and his story?