Books, and all the arts, naturally and endlessly inspire change because they free up the possibilities between reality and the imagination, and the possibilities for change in us.

Sugar doesn’t give advice; with every reply, she gives the writer – usually a person in pain, battling impossible demons – a true story about her own life. Not just a trite little anecdote, but a deep story that is a window into her own pain. She never soothes or merely comforts: she is 100% real.

Then I read it, and it astounded me. It’s not just the scrolling, reading, checking, liking, not liking, judging, validation-seeking, I realised, but the way the lying politician, the poor whale, global injustice and the pug having his nails clipped and screaming like a human, affect my mood, my creativity, my sleep and the work I’m supposed to do.

Over the years, I’ve recognised something else: the power of the written word to force a reckoning with official history.

Monique Roffey, novelist A sacred text in my home is The Myth of the Goddess by Anne Baring and Jules Cashford. I refer to it often. It’s an opus of research which uncovered that the first stories humans ever told were matrifocal and female-centric; they were the stories of the wondrous mystery of birth and rebirth. Of course they were.