Jacqueline Wilson is one of Britain's most popular children's authors. Her latest book, Vicky Angel, has just been published.
"I was born in Bath, but we moved to south London when I was a year old. I had no brothers or sisters and from an early age I became one of those weird children who live in their imaginations. I would sit in corners nattering to myself, and after I learnt to write I used to fill exercise books full of stories. For inspiration I would cut out photos of girls from pattern books and stick cardboard on the back to turn them into paper dolls, each with its own personality.
"My first school was Lee Manor Infants, though I remember very little about it, except crying at school dinners. After a year we moved to Kingston, where I went to the Latchmere Infants and Junior School. It was hard at first as everyone had already been there a year and had made friends, but after a while I came to love it. My favourite teacher was Mr Townsend. He was kind and good-looking and I had a bit of a crush. He was encouraging about my writing and painting.
"I passed my 11+ at the second attempt and went to Coombe Girls' School in New Malden, which was run by a terrifying headteacher, Miss Hazlett, who used to take any breaches of discipline, such as not wearing a beret on the way home, immensely seriously. I was reasonably good at English, which was taken by a Miss Pierce. She was not one to praise or flatter unduly, but she taught us essay structure and had a way of gently pointing you in the way of authors worth reading.
"I passed five or six O-levels; I didn't want to to stay on to do A-levels. Had I known about sixth-form colleges or techs, I would have continued. I then spent a year at secretarial college before I replied to an ad for teenage magazine writers in the Evening Standard; I sold my very first story for three guineas, then wrote a few more, before being offered a full-time job at the magazine. I guess I was just very lucky."
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