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I was like the family clown. The middle child entertaining. I was a lousy student, but interestingly, the nuns always let me write plays or do drawings, endless special projects.

I was alone as a child. I lived in fairytales, adventures, Shakespeare. They are the friends, my books.

I never felt like I had to rebel against my convent upbringing, because it was comparatively regular.

I grew up in a completely bookless household. It was my father's boast that he had never read a book from end to end. I don't remember any of his ladies being bookish. So I was entirely dependent on my schoolteachers for my early reading with the exception of 'The Wind in the Willows,' which a stepmother read to me when I was in hospital.

As an only child lacking siblings and playmates, I was alone a great deal of the time. Much of this was spent reading virtually anything I could get my hands on.

I didn't belong to the sort of family where the children's classics were laid on. I went to the public library and read everything I could get my hands on.

I'll tell you what I was like as a child. I was a good person. I was high-spirited but I was a big reader.

My parents were wonderful people, but there were terrible rows between them, and at times I found the atmosphere at home unbearable. The Arthur Ransome books gave me an alternative childhood and the tools to escape.

In the third grade, a nun stuffed me in a garbage can under her desk because she said that's where I belonged. I also had the distinction of being the only altar boy knocked down by a priest during mass.