As a boy, I had an uncle, T. G. Bond, who lived near Moreton Hampstead and who was passionately devoted to Dartmoor. He inspired me with the same love.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My family was going back to England to visit my mother's grandmother, who was very ill. We went up to Liverpool and I met my great-aunt, who was just a force of nature. She was an elocution teacher and a huge enthusiast for theater and the classics. I took her amateur acting class, and she was really impressed with me.
I fell in love with London and one particular era in London.
I met Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley on the same day in 1968. I was sixteen at the time. Very exciting. They were reading at Armagh. One of my teachers brought me to meet them, introduced me, and I became friends with them.
As a boy, because I was born and raised in Ohio, about 60 miles north of Dayton, the legends of the Wrights have been in my memories as long as I can remember.
I was a mixture of a country boy and a town boy, really. Chichester is a town on the coast of England, and I grew up all along that strip of coast that Chichester branches out into. Sometimes I was living in a house in the country, and sometimes I was living in a town.
I grew up with Bond.
When I was a boy, one of my uncles had a cabin on a lake in Wisconsin. My family went there for parts of three summers, and I loved it!
I fell in love with Dorset and ended up living there for a while.
I always loved being in London and being near my parents.
My uncle was a hero, Lewis Roundtree. He was not even related to me really, but he was always called my uncle. He was like a father to me. I was closer to him than I was my father.