\n The Cat in the Hat by Dr\u00a0Seuss, particularly the\u00a0little red fan the cat holds in the tip of its tail. At the age of five, I was reading The Famous Five, getting to grips with Enid Blyton\u2019s most complex characters, Aunt Fanny and Uncle Quentin. I was born in apartheid South Africa. The children in the Famous Five series had\u00a0no human rights problems and it is set in\u00a0Dorset, a landscape that was totally unknown to me. My bedroom window in Johannesburg looked out on a garden of bone-white grass and a peach tree.<\/p>\n
My favourite book\u00a0growing up<\/strong>
\n I was delighted to move on to the imaginative sophistication of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. CS Lewis\u2019s lucky strike was to come up with the idea that a wardrobe was the portal to another world. Although she terrified me, I wanted to meet the White Witch, who rode on a sleigh pulled by white reindeer.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/c0053e7463d6151fafb20d8d544f56711a8f87b1\/574_1081_3577_2862\/master\/3577.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=6fe8e6b4889bc282033a80bcf1a05560\" "\\"Deborah")
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"