I remember the evacuee children from towns and cities throwing stones at the farm animals. When we explained that if you did that you wouldn't have any milk, meat or eggs, they soon learned to respect the animals.

Twenty years ago, I was living in a lovely cottage on the edge of Dartmoor but I couldn’t afford to run a car.

I have a garden, and I’m passionately interested in young people.

I don’t write for any particular kind of person.

A lot of people stop short. They don’t actually die but they say, ‘Right I’m old, and I’m going to retire,’ and then they dwindle into nothing. They go off to Florida and become jolly boring.

Each marriage has to be judged separately, and we never know what’s going on in another person’s marriage.

I have deliberately left Sylvester and Julia’s appearances to the reader’s imagination.

I was sent to a finishing school, which didn’t last long when mother found out how badly chaperoned we were. Then I ‘came out’ before going to a domestic science school.

Of course risk-taking does not always pay off, but it’s a lot of fun!

I always read that men don’t like intelligent girls, but I’ve always found the reverse.