Rosemary Sutcliff grew up was seriously affected by juvenile arthritis from a very young age. She was not at school and unable to read until aged about ten years, but she was read to ceaselessly by her mother, including Grimm’s Fairy-Tales – a copy of which was in her library.

Allegedly Albert Einstein, the physicist behind the Theory of General Relativity and other crucial theoretical advances of the 20th century, once said: “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” Mind you that he said it might be a fairy-tale itself: https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2013/12/einsteins-folklore .