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I no longer knew what it was like to feel Australian.

You have to remember that I was an Australian girl of the Fifties and Sixties. For Australians at that time, it was imperative to get out of the country and discover the world.

When I left school I went to Australia for a year and worked in the drama department of a school in Perth.

I was first in Sydney in 1993, and have been a few times since then. For someone who didn't know Australia, it came as a shock how intelligent, interesting and funny the people were. If I lived there I might see it differently, but as a visitor it was a lot of fun.

I loved nearly all my teachers; but it was not till I went home to live at Oxford, in 1867, that I awoke intellectually to a hundred interests and influences that begin much earlier nowadays to affect any clever child.

Growing up, I was like any Aussie kid - you know we love our sport - that was my favourite subject at school. That is a subject, right?

When I was at school, you had to choose; there was a lot of pressure to assimilate. You were an Aussie, or you were one of 'the wogs' - which was everybody else. But I didn't want to be in either group, so I felt like an odd one out.

Although my father is English, I was brought up in Australia.

In Australia, not reading poetry is the national pastime.

Luckily, the public school system that I was in had a really great drama program, so I plunged into that. It really sort of kept me afloat because I was bored in school.