Hilary Rose: 'Having your first child is such a baptism of fire'

Hilary Rose

I had a really happy childhood. I just remember having a lot of freedom in the countryside. Between the age of four and nine I was out all day every day, on my own in the fields, finding fairy forts and broken down houses and petting cows and kidnapping horses.

I spent a lot of time on my own as a child, and that was a really positive thing for me. I am five years younger than my next sibling (there's four of us altogether). It's a weird thing when you're a child and you can see things quite clearly before they get muddled by society and education and everything else. I had a very clear picture of who I was as a kid.