I made it to London aged six, an event I recorded in my diary with coloured markers to convey my sense of occasion. And in 1983, after graduating from college, I returned to spend two years at Cambridge University.

Portia remembered her interview in the small office upstairs...in which she had been so shy, so terrified about not being good enough, not getting this thing, this chance, which she had only just discovered she wanted very badly.

The Thames could be thought of as England's longest archaeological site, and no fewer than 90,000 objects recovered from its foreshore are in the collection of the Museum of London, whose 30-year relationship with London mudlarks is both committed and highly regulated.

Back in the 1980s, when I was a lowly editorial assistant by day and trying to be a novelist by night, no god reigned so supreme as the god of literary prose.

A good story, a story resonant and remarkable, can be remade endlessly to tell new sides of itself for new generations of readers.

The implication of AKC registration is that a dog who has it is better than a dog who hasn't.