Gilbert’s evenings of her childhood were peopled by eccentric, drunk, and competitively inappropriate family members, who made Elizabeth Gilbert realise that when it comes to storytelling “no one’s going to give you the floor…you have to earn it by telling the best story”. Here, in conversation with Paul Holdengräber, Gilbert recounts how she literally “married” writing when she was a teenager, in a ceremony in her bedroom, and also how, since the success of her globe-spanning memoir ‘Eat, Pray, Love’, she has become a more sedentary creature, like Candide nowhere more content than gardening at home in New Jersey.

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