One of my few childhood memories is as an eight-year-old, refused permission to watch the Hitchcock season on Irish television, sneakily viewing 'The Birds' though a crack in the living-room door. It transformed my hitherto perfectly enjoyable half-mile walk to school, down a country lane patrolled by watchful birds, into a terrifying ordeal.

Translating any insights I have for strangers' lives into positive action in my own has proved a challenge. While I've learned a lot about what everyone else is thinking, I fail miserably to use such knowledge in my private relationships.

It's a universal truth that no parent wishes to acknowledge that the fear and phobias we are in thrall to in adulthood almost invariably connect back to childhood experiences.

Mariella Frostrup Quotes