Douglas Stewart

It's a hard thing to explain.

But after having this pitch battle where I felt like I was representing the Protestants, I would go home to my single mother who was a Catholic

And so it was all entirely pointless, I think.

In fact, when I was 16 and I was guided towards textiles, I couldn't quite tell you what the word textile meant.

I'm often asked as a writer, what was your favorite childhood book?

What did you read as a kid?

And the answer to that is I didn't read books as a kid.

We didn't have any books at home.

We didn't have access to them.

It wasn't quite such an unusual thing because I think if I looked at the boys that grew up around, many of them also weren't reading either.

But, you know, children also need a huge amount of peace in their lives in order to read, you know, both peace inside themselves and peace at home and also at school, to be honest.

And I didn't have any of that because I was dealing with a single mother who was suffering with addiction.

And then at school, I was being bullied for being gay.

But two things happened when I was 16.

The first thing that happened was my mother died very suddenly one morning.

Her addiction finally got the better of her.

And when I left for school in the morning, she was fine.

When I came home at lunchtime, she was dead.

And also at 16, school becomes...

optional for Scottish children.