Stories are like that. Like cities, they are built on the stones and bones of the past.

Storytelling is as old as speech. It existed before humans first began to carve shapes in stones and press their hands upon the rocky walls of caves.

Stories are the common ground that allow people to connect, despite all our defences and all our differences.

Fairy tales are stories of triumph and transformation and true love, all things I fervently believe in.

Sanitising stories, leaching out all of the sense of danger and the darkness out of the stories, actually reduces them and stops them from doing what they're supposed to do, which is teach us how to manage our lives.

Fairytales work on two levels. On a conscious level, they are stories of true love and triumph and overcoming difficult odds and so are pleasurable to read. But they work on a deeper and symbolic level in that they play out our universal psychological dramas and hidden desires and fears.