Sue Townsend: When were you happiest?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

Asked in 52 of the 131 consecutive instalments of The Guardian's The Q&A harvested on 2026-08-29.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded Sue Townsend said elsewhere, not written here

Flying over the Australian outback in a jet, looking down at the incredible orange scenery, the uninhabited hills and gullies, listening to Tchaikovsky on my headphones and drinking champagne with a cigarette in my hand. It was 1984, I'd been to the Adelaide Book Festival and was going back to my husband and my children.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 20 January 2007 source ↗

Others on this question

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Nicholson Baker Contemporary American novelist and writer

When we had children at home. But recently I finished a book about old secrets that I’ve been working on for a long time, and when I was done, I felt a gigantic, joyful relief in having escaped from the corn maze of remembered facts in which I’d been wandering for so long.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 1 August 2020 source ↗

Seth Meyers American comedian and TV host