The creative spark is popularly associated with youth. What is it really like to achieve enormous success at a tender age?

Precocious talents shortcutting the traditional career arc attract attention. Mark Zuckerberg, who co-founded Facebook at 19, is the figurehead of Silicon Valley’s cult of youth. In creative fields, as Malcolm Gladwell wrote in a New Yorker article, “genius, in the popular conception, is inextricably tied up with precocity — doing something truly creative, we’re inclined to think, requires the freshness and exuberance and energy of youth”. As the writer notes, Orson Welles directed Citizen Kane at 25; the poet, TS Eliot wrote “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock” at just 23.

What is the personal experience of those who achieve career highs at a young age? I spoke to four people who did just that to find out.