Gul Coskun, 38, grew up in Istanbul. From an early age, she had an intense curiosity about different cultures and their history. After leaving home at 19, she lived in Japan, New York, Hong Kong and Korea before settling in London a decade ago, where she became an art dealer, specialising in the works of Andy Warhol. She recently opened a second gallery in Verbier and now lives in the UK and Switzerland, with her nephew, Chris, 14, who she is raising.

I grew up in Istanbul, in one of the loveliest villas on the Asian side of the Bosphorus. We were 100 metres from the Beylerbeyi ferry stop and as children we would wave to the ferry every time it passed. My parents died when I was four and my grandmother, who brought me and my sisters and brother up, was very sociable and we had dinner parties in the garden quite often. The children would dive five metres under the water and fetch mussels or wake up at 4am to catch the fish that came in on the tide.