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My grandmother was very fierce and gruff. She was quite small, but she was very wide.

My mum is bright, ambitious, well read, political and very bolshie: when my dad was conscripted into the Army and posted to Libya, she convinced some general to let her go with him. I don't know how she managed it.

From 1967 to '70, Nigeria fought a war - the Nigeria-Biafra war. And in the middle of that war, I was 14 years old. We spent much of our time with my mother cooking. For the army - my father joined the army as a brigadier - the Biafran army. We were on the Biafran side.

I grew up in a family full of strong women. A great aunt on my mother's side had been a matron on a hospital ship in World War II, and one on my father's side had served in the Women's Royal Naval Service.

My mother was a good mistress to her servants, taking care of them in their sicknesses, not sparing any cost she was able to bestow for their recovery.

My mother married my father in 1956. She was twenty-eight, and he was thirty-one. She loved him with a fierce steadiness borne of loyalty, determination, and an unyielding dignity.

My Aunt Marsha ruled the family with a rod of iron. She was one wicked, mean woman.

My mother did all she could to control me, but at age 14 she sent me to a military school.