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I was encouraged to be imaginative and read, and it was a great childhood for a budding writer because I had the time and the freedom to go into a world of my own.

I loved reading when I was young. I was just completely taken by stories. And I remember taking that into English literature at school and taking that into Shakespeare and finding that opened up a whole world of self-expression to me that I didn't have access to previously.

When I was little, I was a voracious reader, and that really led me to acting as well. I loved being transported into someone else's life, and that's what reading provided me. I also really love to entertain people.

All I wanted to do was read, to be told stories. Stories were full of excitement and emotions and characters that entertained and often inspired.

I decided to become an author when my grandmother taught me to write, when I was six. I can still recall the sensation of being able to turn words into stories. It was a miracle.

For several decades, I believed it was necessary to be extraordinary if you wanted to write, and since I wasn't, I gave up my ambition and settled down to a life of reading.

I was hugely formed by stories I was told as a child whether that was in a book, the cinema, theatre or television and probably television more than any medium is what influenced me as a child and formed my response to literature, story-telling and, therefore, the world around me.

From early on there were two things that filled my life - music and storytelling, both of them provoked by my father. He was a jazz pianist and also a very good storyteller, an avid reader. He passed both those interests on to me.

Reading was my hobby, my sport and my activity of choice. It was the prime pleasure of my days, an unfailing escape from whatever realities were distressing me, and the only source of pride I knew, other vanities lying beyond my grasp. I couldn't do anything else well, but I could do words.

I wanted to become a writer. I enjoyed reading as a child.