One of the world’s top opera singers, Yorkshire-born and bred Lesley Garrett, 69, became the principal soprano for the English National Opera in 1984. She now sits on its board and recently performed in The Barber of Seville. She has extended her career into broadcasting, musicals, classical music and writing. She has released 14 solo albums and was awarded a CBE in 2002 for her services to music. She is married to Peter, a retired GP, with whom she lives in north London, and they have two adult children, Jeremy and Chloe. I grew up near Doncaster, in the heart of the coal industry. My family were all miners or railway workers and we all lived in council houses. Both my parents worked at the local railway station: my father as a signalman and my mother in the booking office. It was post-war Britain and money was very tight, but there was a tremendous sense of community and rebuilding – a real gung-ho, can-do attitude. We grew a lot of our own food and kept pigs, goats and chickens. Mum handled the family finances using jam jars to which she’d add cash weekly for all our bills. It gave me...