A Life Writing

warhorseonstage.com nationaltheatre.org.uk I stuttered into writing. I wasn’t a good reader at school: I read comics because I liked picture stories that moved fast. Then I read one book that changed my life – called Treasure Island. It was the first time I’d ever found that enormous thrill of going on an adventure inside a book. Sadly, that early enthusiasm did get trampled on by some teachers who – as happens now sometimes – were using texts for tests. I wasn’t any good at that – I didn’t write very well, my handwriting was terrible, my spelling wasn’t much better, my grammar was dreadful. And you don’t like what you fail at. So I decided I was going to be a rugby player instead. Books went out of the window for years and I became a really good rugby player.