Emily Watson

very strongly given the impression that dreaming was bad, and it was an activity that would lead to my destruction, that dreaming wasn't allowed.

But I think I had this very, very early connection to dreaming and how powerful it was, and I've always had wild dreams all my life.

Joy, fun, you know, being a very strong unit, a very strong team.

As a small child, I think I was very joyful.

My dad was an architect and my mum was an English teacher.

And they were very smart, cultured, loving parents, but also then became part of the School of Economic Science, which was a religious organisation that became a very, very big part of our lives.

So when I was around...

Aged five, that then became a really strong focus of our lives.

He was an architect.

Where did he practice?

As a young man, I think he was an artist and he was a brilliant mathematician and a poet.

And then everyone said to him, oh, you're good at maths, you're good at art, go be an architect.

And he went off to study architecture.

He and my mum got married while he was still a student.

They had my sister really young on a train.

Yeah, we met on a train.

Most of his work, he was doing design for assisted living, converting places and designing apartments for people with disabilities, wheelchairs, that kind of thing.

He worked for local councils.

He did a lot of that kind of stuff.

And your mum was an English teacher?