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I wanted to be a barrister for a long time.

In my generation, except for a few people who'd gone into banking or nursing or something like that, middle-class women didn't have careers. You were to marry and have children and be a nice mother. You didn't go out and do anything. I found that I got restless.

I had the opportunity to go to law school, and my dad, who was an accountant, couldn't believe I wanted to walk away from that and start cooking.

When I first decided I was going to have a go at writing a book - and really, it was a mid-life crisis - I was 39. I was in business with my husband; we had a very busy lifestyle and quite a hectic schedule running this flourishing business in travel, and I found myself waking up and realising that I didn't want to do this anymore.

I don't regret what I did in the Sixties. I was young and took myself terribly seriously. In the Seventies, I spent too much time in inner-party factional disputes.

I imagine I was supposed to become a lawyer or something. But this was the Depression; the lawyers I saw were all driving cabs. So I thought, 'Well, if I'm going to be badly off anyway, I might as well be badly off in the theater, where you get used to it.'

I grew up in austerity in the 1940s and 1950s.

In the early 2000s, I was going through a lot. I didn't have my head screwed on right. Where I was at as a man, I was still growing up.

For my own part, I had rather suffer any inconvenience from having to work occasionally in chambers and kitchen... than witness the subservience in which the menial class is held in Europe.

I was thrown into the Parliament right away. From 1976 to 1978 I was concerned with the abortion issue, later on with that of divorce.