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On the whole my experience of being read to by my parents was not a success. Alice in Wonderland was spoiled by my habit of asking questions and my intolerance of frustration. The mouse's tail made me feel, well, like the animals. Why was it dry? Who was Fury? Why? What was he furious about? Why did the tail get smaller? Yes, but why do mice's tails …? My father was torn between the desire to be patient and the wish to get on with the book. “It gets better later”, he said, but it did not. I didn't like the Dodo. I wished those animals would sit still and not go scurrying off whenever Dinah was mentioned. Why was Alice so daft as to keep on mentioning – well, you know who. Why couldn't she keep her mouth shut?
Then, when the story cheered up and it looked as if it was getting exciting, my father would shut the book because it was bed-time. Even when Alice did get into the garden it was terribly boring, made worse by my father who kept on seeing some joke which he said was funny.
But awful as it was to hear about Alice's Adventures in Wonderland it was not half as bad as a book about a girl called Little Meg. At the start her mummy and daddy died. Then she had to look after her little brothers and sisters. Of all the stupid things – she tried to sell a box of matches ‘at a street corner’. The street corner was not like being in the jungle; there seemed to be lots of houses. So you would think there would be lots of people about. But there weren't so she couldn't sell any matches. Then a very rich man came and … my sister, for reasons best known to herself, began to bawl the house down. I was not so foolish as to try comforting her; it seemed best to keep clear of her. As I didn't want to have to sit in a tub again I just stared at her as she had taken to staring at me. After a bit I began to bawl too because Little Meg seemed unlikely to get anywhere especially as my
sister was trying to fight her way off my father's lap and had settled into a scream which fetched my