Einstein is a bit of a hero of mine, and he reckoned that imagination was more important than knowledge. That’s even more true now when almost all knowledge is out there in the ether waiting for you to call it down at the tap of a keyboard. You really don’t need to be storing it in your head. But imagination – you can’t download that, and imagination is the key to creative thinking. So what you really need to do is expand your imagination any way you can.

Einstein also said the way to have intelligent children was to read them fairy tales. To increase their intelligence further, you should read them more fairy tales. When you hear the words of a story, the plot might be provided for you by the writer, but your imagination supplies the pictures. When you read it to yourself, your imagination supplies the voices and the sounds too.

Do me a favour – go and read the prologue to Shakespeare’s Henry V if you don’t already know it (it’s out there in the ether waiting for you). He describes perfectly what the imagination is capable of and how you can use it to imagine even, for example, that the confines of the theatre ‘hold the vasty fields of France’. The human imagination is an extraordinary thing, and it’s almost a sin not to make our own as strong and agile and vivid as we can.

Reading fiction is essential. And, incidentally, Einstein’s point is important if you want your children to develop brilliant creative minds. Read to them as often as you can and give them a love of books. It’s no good just watching a movie, where all the imagining is done for you. That’s great, but it’s an entirely different thing and no substitute for reading. And encourage them to make things up. Small children will believe in magic, and in Santa, and the tooth fairy, for years if you help them. I had friends whose children firmly believed that the family cat could actually fly, and it was a delight to find that their parents had sensibly allowed them to continue in this belief, where many parents would unthinkingly have said, ‘Don’t be silly. Cats can’t fly.’

If I had to put one activity at the top of my list for developing the imagination that you need in order to think creatively, it would be reading. Fortunately, however, I don’t have to put one thing at the top, and there are lots of other ways to feed your creative mind. Reading poetry, writing anything, music of whatever kind you enjoy (and remember to shake things up occasionally – don’t get stuck in a rut). Plenty of very clever comedians, especially the more surreal ones, force your mind to make unexpected leaps and twists and jumps, and knock your thinking out of its ruts, along with comedy shows from Monty Python onwards.

If you think about it, loads of jokes are based around catching your brain unawares, setting up a pattern and then unexpectedly breaking it. And immersing yourself in this kind of humour, hanging out with friends that make you laugh, watching funny shows, is one of the most enjoyable ways to encourage your mind to think more creatively.