“I think I started out reading children’s books. I remember, in particular, books like The Once and Future King or the Narnia series or Tolkien. Charlotte’s Web – I remember that so clearly – and I reread that recently. Suddenly, rereading it, I realised that we think that’s a book about a little girl who saves the life of a pig, who then makes friends with a spider. Right? But what I didn’t realise until I reread it, is that the spider, Charlotte, is a writer. She’s the one who saves the pig’s life by writing words in her web. I think that was a theme: many of the books that I loved were about writers and, particularly, little girls who are writers – Harriet the Spy, that kind of thing.”