Children Often Have A Much Stronger Concept

The Kind Of Response I Hope For When I Write My Novels For Children: To Give Them A Chance To Recognize Something Of Their Own Feelings -- About Themselves, Their Parents, Their Friends -- And Their Own Situation As A Kind Of Subject Race, Always At The Mercy Of The Adults Who Mostly Run Their Lives For Them.

I Was Cleaning Out The Pigsty At A Farm In Wales, Where My Mother Had Rented A Room, When The Results Of My Final School Exam Were Handed To Me By The Postman, Along With The News That I Had A State Scholarship To Oxford. I Had Waited For This Letter For So Many Weeks That I Had Abandoned Hope, Deciding That I Had Failed Ignominiously.

But I Don't Write About Sex For Today's Teenagers. Or Doc Martens Boots Either. I'm More Interested In Exploring How Exactly The World Is Run, Which Doesn't Really Change That Much From One Generation To Another.

I Would Hate To Live In The Country, Unless I Was Living On A Farm.

I Wanted To Be A War Reporter - Scrabbling Around, Exposing Things. I Didn't Want To Go To University, I Wanted To Get A Job, But Auntie Beryl Said I Should Go To Oxford.