Fear and I have been intimate enemies for a long time, thanks to an overprotective mother who though each day would bring catastrophe. Despite, or because of, her anxious approach to mothering, she wound up with one child who jumps horses and the other who flies planes.

So I’ve spent a lot of time (and money) examining fear. I especially like what the author Joseph Conrad has to say about it: “How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, lash off its spectral head, take it by the spectral throat?”