What is the best piece of advice you ever got?
You can never love your child too much.

What is your greatest fear?
Many fears really, interconnected and of equal intensity: That I will develop Alzheimer's; that I will have to end my days in a nursing home due to physical or mental ill health; that I will become a burden to others.

What is your most treasured possession?
A small collection of jewellery, not especially valuable, but as gifts and inheritances from those I love and have loved - my husband, sons, brother and sister-in-law, mother, aunts, grandmother, friends, past and present - they are priceless.

If hell is other people, what is heaven?
Hell is not simply other people. Hell is a barbed-wire compound housing a swarm of cynics. Heaven, therefore, if it exists, is an infinite mass of good people to be loved. Q.E.D.

Which living person or persons do you admire the most?
To name-drop a little, the actor, Peter O'Toole, once said disparagingly of me (in the late lamented Groome's Hotel): "this girl doesn't admire anyone!" He was wrong. My admiration for people is lifelong and entangled with my loyalties, therefore my list, too, is lengthy and if the subject should turn out to have feet of clay, I make excuses for human error. In general, I admire anyone with intellectual rigour, even if I disagree with him or her.
So, because the integrity of this long mental list is more important to me than any survey, I won't publicly pick names because by omission I would insult others.

Can money buy you love?
Not crassly, as in buy and sell - but yes, in some instances, such as an arranged marriage where parents are wise and careful, and the partners chosen for each other are open to love. It can be difficult to sustain love when there is no bread.

What would you rate as your greatest achievement to date?
The Millennium Book in the National Library.

When was the last time you cried?
Today. When I wrote a moving scene for one of my characters in the novel I am writing. I found it moving, anyhow!

Who or what has had the greatest influence on you?
I'm hard to influence, but Vincent Browne came very close when I worked for him as a journalist.

What do you most like about your physical appearance?
My left wrist - because it survived a botched operation.

What is your most precious memory?
Holding my mother's hand in the last minutes of her life while the ballet music from Spartacus by Khatchachurian, a piece she loved as the theme from The Onedin Line, played on Lyric FM on the little radio beside her hospital bed. She died as the final notes faded.

Who is the greatest love of your life?
My family.

Where in the world would you like to be right now?
The world is a wide canvas. I cannot choose just one corner. So: in my own kitchen in Mornington with my family; Glacier Park, Montana; Chicago city; Sydney Opera House; Kilcatherine on the Beara Peninsula; Argelès-sur-Mer; Bongani safari park on the fringes of the Kruger, South Africa; the Mormon Tabernacle during one of the choir's weekly performance days in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Could you live without music?
Yes of course. As I can live without theatre, art, radio, literature. But living would be very superficial, reduced to soulless existence.

What is your greatest regret?
Not growing to six feet tall.

What is the craziest thing that you ever did?
Following love (unrequited) to a new continental city in the middle of the night on the day before Christmas Eve, while my parents believed I was shopping in Manchester. Being stranded on the way back at Heathrow airport in fear of not getting home for Christmas - because then my parents would know!

Does reality TV matter?
As a window on a particular period in any society it will be useful to future historians. And writers.

Is death the end?
Yes.

What is the philosophy that you live by?
If I can't be kind, I will do no harm. Try to be cheerful through the bad times and appreciative through the good. This too will pass. Live for now. Loyalty above all.