#childhood-reading

#childhood-reading

My earliest reading memory I was six, and in the lounge in my first home in Manchester. I was sitting cross-legged on the grey carpet, in 1977, when I finished reading whichever of Enid Blyton's brilliant Secret Seven mysteries contains the mind-blowing (genuinely, for a six-year-old) twist that Emma Lane turns out to be a road and not a person.

The moment my oldest child was born, I reached for an anthology of Romantic poetry that I have owned for decades and began reading. "Sweet joy befall thee," I said to my baby, through tears, bestowing a blessing with the words of William Blake. The benediction was unplanned. I had brought the book to the hospital for myself, along with a memoir by Shirley Jackson and a pile of well-worn novels,