Newcastle University

What do you think that books meant to you back when you were younger?

Everything. Again, it’s just personal history, I was very myopic. You wouldn’t know that now because of the modern surgery – it’s not so much taking the cataracts out, they’ve given me really a new lens, a new eye, a new vision. I was extremely myopic, to the extent that at one point I was told I would have to go to a special school for the partially sighted. They didn’t understand enough about it. But, I mean, psychologically that was just a disaster for me, and I have a feeling that because … it’s very much like Charlotte Brontë, actually. I often equate myself with her […]. We lived near there, we lived near Haworth, so I always related myself to Charlotte Brontë because that was one of the books we had at home, Jane Eyre. And of course Mrs Gaskell […]. I suspect because of having such poor vision … with the myopic glasses, you can always see to read, and of course I can’t now [laughs]! […] In fact, one of the surgeons doing the eye operation, he thought because of that I probably wasn’t drawn to sport and outgoing things, but became much more inward turned, and I think it’s possibly right.

And that was why reading was so central for you?

Yes. I mean, I’d just spend hours reading. I did go out to play with people sometimes, but again it’s family circumstances, isn’t it? I was never … rarely one of a gang going out to play […]. The other thing I remember is they said I hadn’t to read for a year, or I had to be rationed, and I wasn’t to do homework, I wasn’t to do school exams, nothing like that. They concentrated on domestic science for me, which I hated. […] And it just wasn’t in my nature. That was absolutely fearsome, and I just used to sort of read on the sly, but then you feel guilty. I was only supposed to read one book a week, but with the library there ….