I'm afraid,' wrote someone on a school report, 'that Claudia's intelligence may well prove a stumbling-block unless she learns how to control her enthusiasms and channel her talents.' Of course, intelligence is always a disadvantage. Parental hearts should sink at the first signs of it.

Children are infinitely credulous. My Lisa was a dull child, but even so she came up with things that pleased and startled me. 'Are there dragons?' she asked. I said that there were not. 'Have there ever been?' I said all the evidence was to the contrary. 'But if there is a word dragon,' she said, 'then once there must have been dragons.

Wars are fought by children. Conceived by their mad demonic elders, and fought by boys.

But who knows their own child? You know bits - certain predictable reactions, a handful of familiar qualities. The rest is impenetrable. And quite right too. You give birth to them. You do not design them.