Zadie Smith

But as an adult woman...

I admire it so much.

Well, helpfully, my mother has written a novel, so a quite autobiographical novel called The Day I Fell Off My Island.

She was born in very tough circumstances.

She grew up extremely poor.

Her mother left to work.

with the Windrush Generation as an orderly in a hospital and she left my mother in Jamaica.

So she was alone for a long time.

At what age?

I think she left when my mother was about five and then called for her when she was about 15.

It was tough.

Who took care of her?

Her grandparents and there were other kids there, but then they were called and then my mother was left alone.

When she came to England, her mother didn't want her to go to school because she wanted her to look after some of the other children in the house.

So my mother, who desperately wanted to be educated, left the house, went down the road looking for a school, and she found a school and said, I want to enroll here.

And the guy was like, this is a private school.

Do you have any money?

My mom was like, no.

So he said, well, there's a public school.

You can try that.