So as the years draw on toward the Biblical limit, the inclination to look back, and to tell some sort of story of what one has seen, grows upon most of us.

It became plain very soon after our marriage that ours was to be a literary partnership.

For after my marriage I had made various attempts to write fiction. They were clearly failures.

But a girl of seventeen is not always thinking of books, especially in the Oxford summer term.

I never liked my father. He really was a dullard and misanthrope. My mother and he were married for 22, years and it was an ill match. She encouraged me to be a writer. She opened her home to black friends, and this was the 1950s. She didn't care later when I write about her.

I'm the youngest of four in a large, exhibitionist family. The only way to get attention was to throw yourself off the top of a ladder - as one of my cousins used to do - or make people laugh.

Unfair servicing practices can worsen a family's already difficult economic situation, and the injury echoes from the family to the community and ultimately throughout the economy.

President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. My promise... is to help you and your family.