At home during term time, despite having no passion for reading, I became very interested in books. It was an interest I developed alone, since no-one around me read: my parents never had time. By the time I was a teenager I was devouring books. I liked adventure stories and cartoons, but my favourites were about ancient and modern history, biographies, anything about men in action in their times. It was a way of studying human nature and learning how to ‘read’ people. Through my observation of them in everyday life and in books, I felt I came to understand them. Better, in any event, than my friends of the same age who had little interest in what was going on outside of their world. Friends often came to me for advice because I seemed to be streets ahead of them when it came to personal relationships and how to negotiate them.  Adults and my teachers, on the other hand, found me rather shy and self-effacing. Even as a small child I was interested in other people, I liked to watch them and work out what was going on behind their words, gestures, attitudes and the vibrations they gave off. I put myself in their shoes and worked out whether they were feeling happy, or upset, whether they were ill or worried… I didn’t attach too much importance to this habit until I started to see my observations regularly confirmed by events. At that time I didn’t think of it as a gift of clairvoyance or premonition, I was just happy to see things work out the way I’d thought they would…It gave me confidence in myself.