I was raised Irish Catholic and went to Holy Names Academy, an all-girl's private Catholic school. I loved the nuns there and I love them to this day.
I went to an all-girls' Catholic school for, like, six years during the time when kids actually had handwriting class. I've always had a propensity for getting the cursive down pretty well.
At 11, I passed the scholarship - only just; I wasn't very good at maths - to Ilford County High for Girls. When the Second World War started we were evacuated, first of all to Ipswich, and then to Aberdare, Queen of the Valleys, in south Wales.
I've always been really artistic. I went to an all-girls private Catholic school, and one of their biggest things was musical theater.
Education has been a really big part of my life. I went to an all-girls school for most of my life, and the curriculum was definitely at the top of your list.
In fact I was slightly badly behaved at school and got in trouble. I would get a bee in my bonnet about something I thought wasn't right, and I would ape about too, to make everybody laugh. That was my way through my girls' school, because I wasn't very academic.
I've always been really artistic. I went to an all-girls' private Catholic school, and one of their biggest things was musical theater. I became obsessed with that.
There was quite a lot of lying around in fields at Stonar, a small independent girls' school in the country near Bath. It was a non-selective school and the right environment for me: academically not particularly pushy.
I went to an all-girls school, and I always felt like I missed out on a traditional high-school life.
