Life Among the Savages is a disrespectful memoir of my children.

Is everyone really crazy but me?

The twins were loitering over their cereal, and Mrs. Walpole, with one eye on the clock and the other on the kitchen window past which the school bus would come in a matter of minutes, felt the unreasonable irritation that comes with being late on a school morning, the wading-through-molasses feeling of trying to hurry children.

In my own experience, contacts with the big world outside the typewriter are puzzling and terrifying; I don’t think I like reality very much. Principally, I don’t understand people outside; people in books are sensible and reasonable, but outside there is no predicting what they will do.

I'm a virgin and I brought up all my children to be the same.

I think it is really terrifying that we are narrowing down to a mechanistic assessment of children by how many pass exams... if standards meant improving right across the board, character, originality, interests, then I wouldn't mind so much. But it doesn't. It always boils down to the same thing, how will we pass exams.