Growing up, I didn't have a lot of toys, and personal entertainment depended on individual ingenuity and imagination - think up a story and go live it for an afternoon.

My breakthrough as a reader was when I discovered the European adventure story writers - Alexander Dumas, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott, to name a few.

After all, you put a lot into creating a universe and everything that goes with it, and it seems a shame to use it only once.

We are constantly being put to the test by trying circumstances and difficult people and problems not necessarily of our own making.