In 1968, I had a mental epiphany. We were sitting cross-legged in the school hall. Mr. Fenton, our Headteacher, was speaking. I listened, but watched the wall below the stage, where a piece of paint was peeling, and I thought "I am having this thought now. In future I must remember that when I was 9 I sat here and had this thought." There was a quality of self-awareness in this idea, or self-reference, that seemed at the time to be utterly new and mysterious. Possibility I believed that I was the only person ever to have such a thought.

But I had already developed self-awareness in a day-dreaming, lust-for-power, way. I wanted to build and run the perfect city (if not the perfect world), which I imagined and repeatedly renamed. But I also had a thirst for honour or fame (which is why the city would be perfect). I wanted to be a performer, applauded and admired. This had three defining effects. It made me take myself very seriously; it made me ambitious; it made me very sensitive to criticism. Events in my life attenuated the first two, but the third retained its potency. Even today, I am thin-skinned.

("Still thin-skinned" might be my slogan, but it is also a pretty good tongue-twister. Try it!)