Nobody ever wins by the cavalry coming to rescue you. It isn't a question of you're happy if you get married, or you get thin, or you get rich, because I've known lots of thin, rich, married people who are absolutely miserable.

Growing up in Ireland, there never seemed to be the notion that children should be seen and not heard. We all looked forward to mealtimes when we'd sit around the table and talk about our days. Storytelling and long, rambling conversations were considered good things.

My mother hoped I would meet a nice doctor or barrister or accountant who would marry me and take me to live in what is now called Fashionable Dublin Four. But she felt that this was a vain hope. I was a bit loud to make a nice professional wife, and anyway, I was too keen on spending my holidays in far flung places to meet any of these people.

An English journalist called Michael Viney told me when I was 25, that I would write well if I cared a lot what I was writing about. That worked. I went home that day and wrote about parents not understanding their children as well as we teachers did, and it was published the very next week.

The majority of my family is in Jersey.

I always knew I was brainy. It struck me when I was a child that I wanted to be an adult because I never felt I belonged among children whose minds were so much simpler than mine.

My father, obviously, and my mother were inspirations. My uncle, Frank Harper, he was an absolute mentor for me.

My dad and mom did what a lot of parents did at the time. They sacrificed a lot of their life and used a lot of their disposable income to make sure their children were educated.