From the bestselling author of Raven: My year of dating dangerously...
In Dreams and Doorways Monica Porter talks to 26 famously successful people - including actors and writers, sports personalities and politicians - and asks them about the formative influences in their early lives.
The public figures interviewed are Douglas Adams, Bonnie Langford, Viviana Durante, Naim Attallah, Sir Henry Cooper, Judy Blume, Roshan Seth, Edina Ronay, Jack Straw, Penelope Lively, Bruce Oldfield, Christopher Chataway, Dame Barbara Cartland, Sir Robin Day, Quentin Blake, Peter Scudamore, Ken Livingstone, Susan Hampshire, Andrew Sachs, Bishop Roy Williamson, Dave Prowse, Terry Pratchett, Rabbi Julia Neuberger, Fatima Whitbread, Timmy Mallett and Edwina Currie.
These prominent men and women from a wide range of vocations speak candidly about the challenges of their early years - involving problems at home or at school, financial difficulties and other deprivations. Then again, a few of them had an enviably happy time. But in every case it is clear that the influences and experiences of childhood gave birth to the dreams of the future adult, and determined the choice of doorway through which they would enter to make their lives.
'It is a charming book, a brilliant idea which works beautifully.'
Southern Evening Echo
'The stories are so different from each other that one is left with the cheerful conclusion that whatever your circumstances - privileged or poverty stricken, pampered or neglected - nothing can hold you back from what you really want.'
Daily Mail