I did really well at school, and I would have loved to have gone to Oxford or Cambridge. I would have read English, and I'm really interested in politics.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I could, I think, quite easily have gone to Oxford. I got four good A levels, but my father's income was such that I wouldn't have got a grant, and he wouldn't let me go to university, and that was the end of it.
After high school, I went to Stanford University and majored in English. Of course, that gave me a chance to do lots more reading and writing. I also received degrees in London and Dublin - where I moved to be near a charming Irishman who became my husband!
I didn't even have a clear idea of why I wanted to go to Oxford - apart from the fact I had fallen in love with the architecture. It certainly wasn't out of some great sense of academic or intellectual achievement. In many ways, my education only began after I'd left university.
After college, I went to England and studied for a couple years.
I got into New College, Oxford. The ethos was that you could work - or not.
My education was paid for by the RAF Benevolent Fund, so a charity school, run like an orphanage, with uniforms and beatings. It was tough, but it got me to Cambridge - like being a chrysalis suddenly becoming a butterfly.
I'd gone to Wellesley College, an amazing women's college where the students were encouraged to follow our dreams. However, after I graduated and had a historical romance published, more than a few people indicated that, in some way, my career choice was a 'waste' of so much education.
The only things I could do were English, drama and history. I loved them subjects, but I hated everything else.
I went to Cambridge University and was the first in my family to graduate.
I won a Marshall scholarship to read philosophy at Oxford, and what I most wanted to do was strengthen public intellectual culture - I'd write books and essays to help us figure out who we wanted to be.