Can you tell me about your childhood
and early family life?
I was born in Aberdeen in 1957 and I
don’t remember very much about it,
to be honest with you. I remember my
house when I was between about four
and eight years old which was a lovely
granite building in Aberdeen and - most
of the houses in the centre of Aberdeen
are this lovely thick granite which was
mined and the buildings all glisten in the
sunshine after it’s been raining. So that
was a quite dramatic place to be in that
sense and I liked my time there. I lived
opposite a park so we used to go and
play there and there was another park
down the road, so it was good. I didn’t
like my school very much. I got sent
to a, a private school while I was a
junior and really it wasn’t terribly great
and I learnt far more when I went to
the state school and when I came
down to England at the age of about
ten or 11.
Where did you move to?
Well, my father died when I was eight,
which was a reasonably traumatic
experience and my mum wanted to
leave Aberdeen to start afresh which
I understand, so we moved down to
Hornchurch - my mum wanted to move
there because I think, first of all her sister
was there, and secondly also because
she had been stationed there during the
war. There was an airfield there and she
had done some work on the airfield so
she knew it from that as well. So, that’s
where we went, down to Hornchurch.
I felt sort of stateless because I had a
strong Scottish accent, which I haven’t
got now, and everyone in England
thought I was a foreigner and when I
went back to Scotland to see my friends,
they all thought I was English because
I’d picked up an English accent so I
was sort of stateless. I didn’t really feel
at home anywhere between the ages
of about 11 and, well, when I came to
Lewes, which was when I was 28.
What brought you to Lewes?
I was with my girlfriend at the time in
Reigate, briefly, and I had this idea that
it’d be nice to live 50 miles from London
on the basis that I didn’t want to be in
London but I wanted to be somewhere
near it, so we went on this self-created
road trip round, followed the M25 I think,
so just round 50 miles from London to
look at places. It wasn’t always 50 miles,
as we went to places like Saffron Walden
and so on, then we found Lewes, which
is almost exactly 50 miles from London.
I’d never heard of it before, and thought it
was a great place; I just fell in love with it.
I didn’t really feel at
home anywhere between
the ages of about 11
and, well, when I came
to Lewes, which was
when I was 28.
When you were younger, did you have
an idea of what you wanted to be?
Oh, I wanted to be a train driver, I think.
I was always interested in politics and
half-thought I might become involved in
politics, but then I half-thought I might
be involved with the railways, and as it
happens it turned out to be both as I was
the Transport Minister. But I didn’t have a
plan