My strongest memory is of my father being out a lot. There was a sort of change of gear after the Festival, and the nature of his life altered. We moved to a bigger house and I suppose it made him famous. One of the family legends is that he came home one day and told my older sister that he was going to be a Sir and she said, 'Does that mean we can have a butler?'
We had new outfits for the Festival, and I think that had serious significance. New clothes were an event then, unlike now, and I had a sense that they were marking something special. We had long white socks, black patent shoes, dark green pleated skirts, dark green box jackets and white blouses. When we got there, it was something on a scale I hadn't experienced before. I can still feel the atmosphere of expectation and optimism.
It was said at the time that the Festival was built by a bunch of herbivores who were rather gentle grass-eating chaps in suede shoes, like my father, who had a socialist agenda of some sort. The housing schemes built at the time were all part of that. Post-war architecture was full of optimism about building a new society and cities were going to be wonderful, with places for children to play, and the Festival seemed to embody that spirit.
If you were being mean, you would say that my father was editorially too pluralist, that he didn't have a strong enough vision, but he wasn't part of that serious, dogged group of architects. He was much more in favour of encouraging people to express their own voice and took enormous enjoyment from watching that happen.
The people who should get credit are the ones who thought of him to do the job because it was quite a risky appointment. He hadn't done very much but he showed the potential to pull this thing together; to start with London in a state of rubble and misery and to make something that's somehow a kind of celebration of survival.
There was a long time when no one was interested in the Festival. Many years went by when no one asked me about it. I think it was regarded as naive and twee. People thought that it was an expression of a side of England that we didn't want to know about. But there's been a reappraisal and that's the natural evolution of fashion.