Claire Kilroy: ‘My moral compass has turned 180 degrees on Lolita’

The Irish author on the allure of Nabokov, the comfort of Yeats and the power of Winnie-the-Pooh

My earliest reading memory
Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty when I was about eight or nine, sitting in the back of my mother’s parked Mini one hot summer’s day, my legs burning on the red vinyl seat, and bawling because they were putting the bearing rein on Ginger. I learned two things: empathy for living creatures and the power of the first-person narrator.

My favourite book as a child
Marvin K Mooney Will You Please Go Now! by Dr Seuss. I used to play it like a game, sliding up and down the various crazy contraptions with Marvin. It never got old. But I did.