When I was three months old, we moved to the middle flat at 47 Chiswick High Road, in west London. It had a large drawing room, a kitchen, two bedrooms and a bathroom. The drawing room was kept for company — we lived in the kitchen.
We had no money, but it didn’t matter. I feel blessed that we were poor. You can become confident and curious in any environment, so long as it’s supportive.
I was largely left to my own devices, which was a good lesson. I had time to think and to get bored, which encouraged me to devise my own entertainment and stimulation. Picking up a book was my default setting. I could read before I went to kindergarten.
I spent hours playing with my cardboard toy theatre, manipulating the characters with magnets concealed beneath the stage. Mum and Dad used to sit through hours of these plays. The three of us also staged chess tournaments, a good discipline for learning and attention span.
Had my father, Reg, been born into a different background and time, he would have been a university professor. He was an electrician, but at home he was obsessed with mechanics, and was always taking the car apart. He gave me an early fascination for asking questions.
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Mum, a former dancer, was 10 years younger. She was from solid Protestant stock, Dad was Jewish, but I was brought up in a ruthlessly secular environment. This sparked a backlash — I am fascinated by religion. Although I remain spiritually autistic, I hope I’m a good enough scientist to keep an open mind.
My brother, Graham, was born on the night that President Kennedy was assassinated. I remember coming home, having left Mum to the joys of childbirth, and the lady upstairs rushing out to say, “They’ve shot him!”
I had mixed feelings about Graham’s arrival. At 13, I was too old to be a playmate. He had this wretched “walkie pen” — a metal-framed walking aid with wheels and sharp edges. He would get up a head of steam and career into my knees.
My retribution took many forms. When he was three, I forced him to recite passages from Macbeth. And when he squirted me with his water pistol, I put it in the oven — he watched it melt.
Even then, I was interested in brains. When I was 16, I bought a rabbit from the butcher and dissected its brain with Mum’s dressmaking shears, tweezers and a carving knife. Graham was transfixed.
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At school, I found science boring. I was a dreamy child, and learning how the amoeba split in two didn’t do it for me. Initially, I wasn’t in the top streams at Godolphin & Latymer [an independent girls’ school in Hammersmith]. I did my homework on the bus. Miss Lemon, my inspirational Greek teacher, changed all that. In my first-term Greek exams, I attained 95% and had an epiphany — if you worked, you could do well.
At 18, I gained a place at St Hilda’s, Oxford, reading psychology, philosophy and physiology. On my first day, I took Mum and Dad into the dining room, where the dons were sitting at high table. Mum gazed at them and said, “I wonder if you’ll ever be like that.”
My parents remained at No 47 until they moved into sheltered housing in 2004, where Mum still lives happily. Dad died in 2011. I remember the flat with great nostalgia. It was there that they taught me to take life on the chin and be honest about what you are — for that reason, I wasn’t intimidated by Oxford. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Mind Change: How Digital Technologies Are Leaving Their Mark on Our Brains by Susan Greenfield is out now in paperback (Rider £9.99). To buy it for £8.99, inc p&p, call 0845 271 2135 or visit thesundaytimes. co.uk/bookshop