Today, Stephen Wiltshire is one of Britain’s best-known artists. His commissions have a four- to eight-month waiting list, and videos of him sketching panoramic cityscapes in perfect scale have a tendency to go viral.

But when Stephen was in school, his teachers didn’t know what to do with him. Diagnosed with autism at age three, he didn’t say his first word (“paper”) until age five. Still, as a child, Stephen could sketch stunningly accurate images of wildlife and caricatures of his teachers.

Later he began drawing the buildings he was seeing around London with impressive detail. His older sister Annette would take him to the home of a school friend who lived on the 14th floor of an apartment building, so