I said it must be interesting to be able to see people without them seeing you. It seemed to me that children are often treated in the same way, as witnesses whose presence was somehow not taken into account.

Like the child, the creative writing student is posited as a centre of vulnerable creativity, needful of attention and authority.

I'm waiting for the day when my children cease to find my domestic propriety reassuring and actually find it annoying.

Having your second child, in case you were wondering, is a lot harder than having your first, except for those people who find it easier. I'm afraid I don't have the latest figures to confirm this.

I have no sense of a model or predecessor when I write a memoir: For me, the form exists as a method of processing material that retains too many connections to life to be approached strictly and aesthetically. A memoir is a risk, a one-off, a bastard child.