Following is text from Myth & Magic, published in 2001 by HarperCollins.

On the living room wall there was a pencil rendering of the Castle of Chillon, near Lake Geneva, done by my grandmother at age 19, before she embraced the more acceptable career of schoolmistress and never did another picture in her life... ?I can't remember ever not drawing. My mother would do her best to help with the more ambitious renderings, but around primary school age, her draughtsmanship was no longer up to my expectations. I remember bursting into tears of frustration when we both failed to draw a cow the way I wanted.?

School itself was a mixed blessing; it seemed we always moved house at just the wrong time of the year, and l ended ...