Poetry was one of the things that interested me most as I was growing up. I used to write it in my head all the time. I still think the very greatest pleasure in life is to write a poem.

You become more tolerant when you become older. You're not interested in rapping people over the knuckles; you're interested in understanding them.

I enjoyed the whole process of learning and was always happy when autumn came and school or college started up again.

One of my most vivid memories of the mid-1950s is of crying into a washbasin full of soapy grey baby clothes - there were no washing machines - while my handsome and adored husband was off playing football in the park on Sunday morning with all the delightful young men who had been friends to both of us at Cambridge three years earlier.