Lubaina Himid

And she sailed around the Horn of Africa, that way round, because the Suez Canal was shut, and married him in Zanzibar.

He was a teacher by then.

It was sort of like an education training college thing.

Yes, he used to get malaria, as you do, every year.

And then that year, when I was four or five months old, he just contracted it much worse than he'd ever done before.

And he died on the 5th of November.

And he was 33.

Yeah.

I guess it was really bad for my mother, but she wasn't quite alone because her sister was here in London.

I think I was about seven before my auntie had my first cousin.

So, you know, I thought of them as like my parents and my mum and my auntie.

And in the house that we lived in, in Maida Vale, lots of people came and went and people were lodgers there.

And as a child, I understood that she was unhappy, but my childhood wasn't unhappy.

Certainly not when I was so young, but I kind of am a bit of a sort of sponge person and I think I felt her sadness somehow.

I can remember, you know, collecting leaves, drawing them, drawing stuff, putting paintings on the wall, making things with clay.

I think so, because it wasn't a Victorian school, so there were classrooms where you could look out of the window, you know, rather than that Victorian thing where there's still lots of those schools still about, where you're sitting at your desk and you can see the sky, but you can't look out of the window.

But this school was designed so that when you were looking out, you were looking out at either other classrooms or you were looking out onto the playground.

I didn't realise I was sitting in a brutalist masterpiece, but...

But it was a lovely place.

A bit hopeless, a bit dreamy and vague.