IN A CHURCHYARD

Whenever I see snowdrops growing in a churchyard I think of my great-grandmother. I never knew her, but I know that she lived (and died) in a castle in Czechoslovakia. I also know that every year, at the first hint of spring, she went barefoot into a special part of her garden and gently lifted the snowy coverlet from the earliest snowdrops.

She went barefooted because that's simply what she did. How do I know all this? I learned it from my mother who, year after year, sent pressed snowdrops to her brother George for his February birthday. He lived in Nassau in the Bahamas by then and she sent them from her home in Kent as a poignant reminder of their shared childhood in Czechoslovakia - and of their grandmother.

Do you find, as I do, that when we keep memories alive it is almost as if the one we're thinking of has not died? I certainly found that when, inspired by my grandmother, I wrote The Foreigner!