Sometimes, life is difficult for felines – particularly felines who live in a household of writers. Sometimes, they have have to really grab the attention with both furry paws. At the moment I’m correcting the page proofs of my book, which means that Boris is in a colossal bad mood with me. I come home from work, eat, and then sit down to work again on...

For ten years I was an arts journalist on Metro newspaper: a job that I loved. For ten years, I consumed theatre, classical ballet, modern ballet, classical music, contemporary dance, opera etc. and got paid to write about it. Yes, I was very lucky. When my print career ended in 2009, I was sad, but I knew that my heart was no longer in newspaper journalism. I...