Growing up with strong female role models is always inspiring, and growing up, that was something I aspired to play.

I'm not sure why it's taken so long, but I think people are relating to strong female leads.

I think it's great that you have inspirational female roles, that it's not just the pretty girl on the arm of a man.

I knew exactly what I wanted to do since I could remember. As a kid, if my friends came round after school for dinner, I'd put on shows; I'd write plays and charge the parents £1.50 for a ticket for sweetie money."

To me history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is.

I've been painting and drawing and taking pictures as long as I've been writing music - and I've actually been drawing longer than I've been writing music.

It's my belief that I was a writer - a very hardworking writer - well before I was published. I did care what others thought, and it was embarrassing when people asked me what I had published, so I didn't talk much about writing; rather, I just kept writing.

My creativity and my political work are linked. I don't do this work out of guilt or out of responsibility.