Childhood literary influences

Confessing one’s childhood literary influences can be perfectly beastly.

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13th August, 2011

Sometimes when I’m talking to school classes about writing, an inquisitor will ask, “What did you read that most influenced you when you were young?” I like the 10-year-olds who ask this – if only because they believe I once was young. There are various answers I could give. Tolstoy in the original Russian. The captions under Page 3 Girls in the overseas Daily Mirror my godparents used to get. (“Doris always fronts up to life …”) But if I’m in honesty mode, I tell them it was The Boy from London, by ...

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