Penelope Lively webchat 7 August

I can't remember which book it was of yours but in one an accident almost happened and the person in the book couldn't stop thinking about what might have been had they not acted in the right way. It so rang true with me but I do wish I could change being that way.; at least I realised that it wasn't just me that thought in that way . I wondered if you now wish that something that shaped you in some way hadn't happened? Gemini; i knew someone called Wrigglesworth and she told me the family name had been used by the aothor of Biggles as he knew her father [or grandfather] but changed the name to Biggles because it sounded better.

Thinking back to my childhood, the books I remember most fondly are those that filled me with a sense of excitement, adventure and derring-do!
I devoured Treasure Island and Kidnapped, indeed anything by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Then there were the adventures of the Bobbsey twins by Laura Lee Hope.
And of course the Little Women books by Louisa May Alcott. I so identified with Jo!
Then there was the allure of boarding school life. Angela Brazil made it all sound so 'jolly'!!
...Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer, etc. etc...I could go on...but will end with one final mention: the Biggles stories, raided from my brother, who was 8 years older. Already a tomboy, I so wished I'd been born a boy!!!