I Am Not A Victim. I Am

The Kind Of Response I Hope For When I Write My Novels For Children: To Give Them A Chance To Recognize Something Of Their Own Feelings -- About Themselves, Their Parents, Their Friends -- And Their Own Situation As A Kind Of Subject Race, Always At The Mercy Of The Adults Who Mostly Run Their Lives For Them.

I Was Cleaning Out The Pigsty At A Farm In Wales, Where My Mother Had Rented A Room, When The Results Of My Final School Exam Were Handed To Me By The Postman, Along With The News That I Had A State Scholarship To Oxford. I Had Waited For This Letter For So Many Weeks That I Had Abandoned Hope, Deciding That I Had Failed Ignominiously.

If You Are Going To Make Companies, Corporations, Actually Responsible For The Safety Of Other People's Lives, Then If They Fail In Their Duty, The Only Thing To Prevent Them Failing In Their Duty Is The Fear That They Would Be Put Behind Bars.

I Like Stirring The Pot - I Think It's Part Of My Duty, To Shake People Up A Bit - Make Them Look At Things In A Different Way.

I Wanted To Be A War Reporter - Scrabbling Around, Exposing Things. I Didn't Want To Go To University, I Wanted To Get A Job, But Auntie Beryl Said I Should Go To Oxford.