Dolly Parton

The ‘Jolene’ country icon has spoken at length about growing up poor in rural Tennessee Blue Mountain Range as the fourth of 12 kids in a one-bedroom cabin.

The 77-year-old singer/songwriter's own humble beginnings inspired her to found her Imagination Library in 1995 - which has since gone on to supply millions of children with free books.

She said: "I got started doing this because of my own father. "We're very country people, living out in the woods as so many families are, very poor and they have to work in the fields and everybody has to do their part to make it. My dad was from a huge family too, 13 or 14 kids. He never got a chance to go to school. And daddy was so smart and so hardworking, was a good daddy, but he couldn't read and write and that troubled him. And so, I got the idea that I wanted to do something for my dad."