The novelist and screenwriter on learning to read with dyslexia, being inspired by the great playwrights, and why she could never read Little Women again
My earliest reading memory
It was not until I was seven that a teacher began to realise I was unable to read. Nowadays it would be diagnosed as dyslexia, but at the time that was unheard of. So I was later than most children to discover a special book. And when I finally did, it was due to my grandmother listening to the radio. I woke up and heard an eerie voice crying, “Let me in.” Her bedroom was at the end of a dark corridor so, terrified, I burst into the room. It was Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.
My favourite book growing up
Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. When I saw the movie the characters I’d pictured became real, especially Katharine Hepburn’s Jo March. I also grew fond of poetry and learned Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene by heart.
