Beginner’s pluck: SHEILA MAHER

“My earliest memory was of my mother reading Roald Dahl to us in bed. I later read a lot of Enid Blighton. I took a break from reading in my teens, but rediscovered it in my late twenties.

“After college there were no jobs. So I worked in canteens, as a dishwasher for four years, then I went to Brussels and worked in the EU and then the UN. When I came back I worked in marketing in the Bank of Ireland for a year.