Quotes

When I was fourteen, the war came. My brother and I were evacuated in a school train, labelled like parcels with our names and addresses hung on cards round our necks, to a mining valley in South Wales. We lived there for three years with a number of foster parents, some nice, some nasty, but chiefly, like Mr. Evans in "Carrie's War", a mixture of both. Since billets were scarce, we had to learn to keep on the right side of our hosts, which meant watching them rather more closely and warily than most children need to watch adults. We spent the school holidays with our mother on a Shropshire farm, where we were unreservedly, almost lyrically happy. This beautiful county later became the setting for "The White Horse Gang" (1978).

[commenting on the news that Jarvis, the company that maintained the track at Potter's Bar where her husband died in a train crash, had gone into administration] One had a sense when Jarvis went into administration that right had finally been done. I would have opened champagne, but of course I have no one to share it with.