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Untitled
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 ZZ: To begin at the beginning, you were born...
DA: Yes.
ZZ: ...on March 11, 1952 in Cambridge, England. And I understand you have a number of siblings?
DA: I have a rather complicated family, actually. I have one full sibling, a sister three years younger than me. And then, because my parents divorced and both remarried, I have two half-siblings on my mother's side, a sister and brother. And a half-sister on my father's side. And also a couple of stepsisters by my father's second wife's first marriage.
ZZ: That makes for quite a Christmas, eh?
DA: Yes!
ZZ: What did your parents do for a living?
DA: My mother was a nurse and my father was a teacher. He taught divinity.
ZZ: Really? And you're an atheist?
DA: Yes.
ZZ: How did that happen?
DA: I guess I spent a bit of time thinking about it. [Laughter.]
ZZ: How would you characterize your childhood? Did you spend a lot of time by yourself?
DA: Quite a bit. Yes. It was not a terribly happy one actually, I guess which is why my parents divorced when I was five. I think things probably improved a little bit after that.
ZZ: What sort of a little boy were you?
DA: I was a very sort of dreamy kid. Somebody said they once saw me actually walk slap-bang into a lamppost in broad daylight with my eyes open. I guess my mind was on something else.
ZZ: When you were a youngster, which teachers or adults had a real influence on you?
DA: I think the teachers who had the most effect on me at school, by an extraordinary coincidence, were in the fields of English Literature and Physics. I had a succession of really very fine teachers in English starting way back at my prep school when I was about nine or ten.
I had a teacher called Frank Halford, whom I still stay in touch with actually, who first taught me about story writing. And then I had one wonderfully eccentric and passionate English Literature teacher called Bill Barron. It's funny -- when you have eccentric teachers at school, we all think what sort of funny, strange creatures they are. Then, gradually, you realize what an enormous contribution their passion and commitment have made to what you've learned.
ZZ: What kind of a learner are you?
DA: Some people are adept at simply soaking up what they've been told and being able to repeat it on request, which is a terribly good strategy of course, especially getting through exams. In my case, I tended to be a slow but thorough learner. Nothing would go in until I'd understood it. But once I understood something, I got a really good grip on it. I tended to oscillate wildly between top and bottom of the class in a whole wide range of different subjects. I must say, lacking the facility to remember things I didn't understand was occasionally very frustrating. On the other hand, I'm very glad in the long run that that's the kind of mind I have.
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On audio: "I was a very sort of dreamy kid."
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