The only female writers of importance I have personally met are Margaret Atwood and Joan Didion, both of whom are rather short. That, I realise, is an advantage of sorts. You have less height to lose. Didion is 5ft 1in according to her Wiki entry, and Atwood, a tiny powerhouse, is listed optimistically as 5ft 4in, but that I think is like the Hollywood actors who I know are several inches shorter than listed heights, having stood breathlessly when Robert Redford walked passed me outside Bloomingdale’s in New York City. I mention this because after completing my third book, the first two written over 40 years ago when I was almost 5ft 8in, I am now 5ft 6in. I have lost an inch and a half since going into a three-year lockdown hunched at my desk. Of course, women do tend to settle when passing a certain point in life, but male writers by and large are so much taller. I’m not a militant feminist but, as the American left says, I feel like ‘peacefully protesting’.
Having written this book of memoirs, I will deck out in leper’s clothes with a warning bell when I return to London. My Best Friends are social distancing themselves in apparent revulsion or contempt after reading excerpts in the Daily Mail. This is very sad. I have accurately described a difficult situation with a now deceased and brilliant man we all admired and loved but who placed me in an unenviable situation. I believe today aspects of his behaviour would almost be called sexual harassment, were I a player of that particular game, but as I’m prone to reasonable disclosure in these matters and think in a memoir one should explain the bad as well as the good, I’m a goner.
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