Many years ago I wrote a book called Dreams and doorsa collection of interviews with well-known people – writers, actors, politicians, athletes – about their childhoods. I wanted to find out how their early experiences helped shape them into the successful adults they later became. And in almost every case, some kind of hardship, heartache or obstacle was a key factor; they were motivated by a determination to overcome adversity.

For boxing champion Henry Cooper, it was extreme poverty in south London. For Olympic javelin thrower Fatima Whitbread, it was being abandoned as a baby and growing up in a loveless children’s home. Actress Susan Hampshire suffered from crippling dyslexia and politician Edwina Currie struggled against the stifling orthodoxy of her provincial Jewish upbringing. Weightlifting champion Dave Prowse, who later played Darth Vader in star Warscontracted tuberculosis of the leg at the age of 13, had to be hospitalized for a year and then had to wear a splint for three years.

Bestselling author Douglas Adams had a difficult childhood due to his parents’ acrimonious marriage and subsequent divorce. Since divorce was uncommon and stigmatized in the 1950s, it set him apart from others. He was also very troubled because he grew so much taller than his peers and was left-handed. “I felt the world was made for everyone else but me,” he said, “so I was plagued with worry and self-doubt.”

My father, Péter Halász, was also a writer. By his late teens he had published dozens of adventure novels. He published his first full-length novel at 20, making it popular in Hungary. He once told me that he wrote out of loneliness. An only child, his parents separated when he was five. He was sent around and lived for a time in a children’s home, where he was exposed to anti-Semitism because of his Jewish background. Making up stories, some set in the Wild West or the foggy streets of London, fueled his imagination and populated his lonely world with exciting characters. Writing saved him, he said.

When I reflect on my own childhood and adolescence, I sometimes wonder if I could have had a literary career at all if I had enjoyed the relaxed upbringing that my contemporaries enjoyed in 1960s America. Their lives were full of Saturday night dances and slumber parties and drive-in smooches – the stuff of this TV sitcom Beautiful daysMy days were somewhat less happy. My mother did not believe in the permissive parenting policies of liberal American mothers, but in the traditional, strict method to which she herself had been exposed in rural Hungary in the first decades of the 20th century.

You can imagine how alienated this made me from the mainstream culture around me. I longed to roam around with my mates, unfettered and carefree. Instead, I holed myself up in my room and vented my worries in poems and other secret doodles. Like my father, I turned to writing as an escape from painful reality, a kind of self-directed therapy. Eventually, it evolved from a habit to a calling.

In later years, my complex, atypical and difficult family background provided me with good material for articles and books. The truth is that a difficult childhood generally makes for a better story than a carefree one. As it turned out, the mother who had caused me so much grief as a child was the same woman who provided me with my most fascinating subject as an author when I wrote about her exploits in Nazi-occupied Budapest. It turned out that she had always been a forceful, uncompromising personality.

I think the big question is whether early misfortune is worth it in the end, as it can be turned into something positive and provides an electrifying spur to success. Looking back, from my perspective today, I would say yes, it is worth it. My swinging sixties were pretty rubbish, but it was a long time ago and it doesn’t matter anymore. My 15-year-old self would no doubt answer very differently. After all, I had just run away (for two days), dragged myself miserably home to face the music, and at that point I would have given anything to be a figure in Beautiful days.