women-authors-from-wales

"Though there are exceptions in all species, many useful border plants — s, s, members of the , s — have foliage that is at best undistinguished, at worst down right ragged. Careful placing of foliage plants will disguise these shortcomings very well. They bring an outstanding variety of form to mixed plantings: fat rounded leaves of , feathery plumes of , stiff sword shapes of and ."

"The book opens like a , with the author trekking after native guides along a snake-infested trail through a in the wilds of . Then — after a plant-gathering side trip with an apothecary in 1629 into the wilds of Kent — we find her riding "with horsemen through the of ". Clearly, it is a member of the band of intrepid English woman explorers who will be leading us through the taxonomical wilderness."

"All of my gardening coats have been my husband's cast-offs. He is sufficiently bigger than me for the coats to be roomy and snug. They all have the same faint smell of wet dog which I find strangely comforting and they are all well endowed with pockets. Why do tailors think that men need more pockets than women? Surely it should be the other way round."

"As far as western Europe is concerned, the 's story began in Turkey, from where in the sixteenth century, European travellers brought back news of the brilliant and until then unknown lils rouges, so prized by the Turks. In fact there were not lilies at all but tulips. In April 1559, the Zürich physician and botanist saw the tulip flowering for the first time in the splendid garden made by Johannes Heinrich Herwart of , . He described its gleaming red petals and its sensuous scent in a book published two years later, the first known report of the flower growing in western Europe. The tulip, wrote Gesner, had 'sprung from a seed which had come from or as others say from '. From that flower and from its wild cousins, gathered over the next 300 years from the steppes of Siberia, from Afghanistan, Chitral, and the , from Isfahan, the Crimea and the , came the s which have been grown in gardens ever since. More than 5,500 different tulips are listed in the International Register published regularly since 1929 by the in the Netherlands."

"For an extrovert April scheme of brilliant yellow and red, intolerable to a melancholy poet such as Eliot, combine a good clear-coloured such as x superba "Crimson and Gold" with groups of s and single early s."

"This is the beginning of the end for the Remainers, but it's the start of something that could be extraordinary for Britain. Our Prime Minister already enjoys considerable affection, but he will be loved if he can pull off the trick of harnessing a post-Brexit economic boom to the vital cause of world-class public services."

"For any Briton unburdened by snobbery, having a prime minister who was once a conjurer’s assistant would be pretty cool, actually. Besides, what better preparation for a Conservative leadership contest than having to maintain a fixed grin while a chap saws you in half?"

"If she doesn't take real, decisive action almost immediately, [[Liz Truss|[Liz] Truss]]'s honeymoon period could rival the reign of Lady Jane Grey for brevity."

"I met Jeremy once on holiday and liked him enormously. Whatever he is full of, it's certainly not hate. (What Prince Harry and Meghan are full of is another matter.) Rather, he exudes a buoyant goodwill and a refusal to take things seriously that cheers everyone up. It has deservedly made him one of the most popular TV figures of our pious, finger-wagging age. You know, I would far rather have a world full of Jeremy Clarksons than Meghan Markles. I'm sure that things feel pretty serious for him right now, with the woke witchfinders at the door, but let's hope good times and high spirits return soon. We need him more than ever. Most people know that, for God’s sake."

"One thing that both sides avoid mentioning is the fact that [[Russell Brand|[Russell] Brand]] was a hugely successful womaniser and his success was enabled by the girls who threw themselves at him in huge numbers."

"Are the females who fell for his weapons-grade flirting and lascivious quips, for that vampish slash of Kohl under the beady, greedy eyes, all victims of "emotional abuse"? Or did they possibly make really bad choices, as most of us have done at some point, ignoring the fact that the Shagger of the Year was unlikely to turn into Mr Darcy just because he pretended to take your phone number after you'd had sex with him in the hotel opposite his gig?"

"This is known as "victim shaming" now, but it is a true account of how young women felt about a famous, magnetic male who flattered them. And it would be more honest, perhaps, to admit that certain girls will always throw themselves at powerful, sexy, exploitative men."

""But Labour will be worse" no longer works as a bogeyman to scare the Tory tribe back into the polling booth. One wag described the choice between [[Rishi Sunak|[Rishi] Sunak]] and Sir Keir Starmer as, "Which Kray twin do you prefer?" Although one can't help feeling a little wistfully that, unlike Rishi and Keir, Reggie and Ronnie would at least have got a few things sorted in their forthright East End fashion."

"We are already in Opposition, dear reader. Sorry to say. We are in Opposition against our own government, and have been for some time. It is sad and exhausting and dreadfully demoralising that it should have come to this, but here we are."

"One thing you can be sure this embarrassingly useless inquiry will not be concluding is that our pandemic policy was devised and implemented by a group of spectrummy males, many of them physicists, mathematical modellers and behavioural psychologists who would struggle to pick out their own child in a school photograph."

"At Cop28, there are many who are convinced that we face a climate catastrophe in the next few decades if net zero is not delivered. Well, I say we are certain to have an economic and societal catastrophe if we persist in trying to reach that goal by 2050. Humanity cannot bear it."

"Members of the Garrick Club, I beg you: do not surrender to the unsmiling commissars of the Cultural Revolution. They seek the elimination of you and your kind. Keep serving your awful offal. Beware, salad! Keep the ladies out and the Archibalds in."

"You know, I think Nigel Farage is already the leader of the Conservatives. He certainly makes a better, more convincing Tory than Rishi Sunak."

"Yesterday morning, I was on a train to Liverpool to cover the trial when my editor called to break the news about the new guilty plea. My first reaction was anger. The reason I had set aside a predicted three-to-four weeks away from home, putting myself through what would undoubtedly be harrowing stories of maimed and dying primary-school children, was pretty straightforward: I wanted to bear witness. I wanted to get to the truth about what should, by rights, if this still calls itself a civilised society, be regarded as a notorious massacre. The heinous mass-murder of children with a carved knife – our nation has known nothing on that scale since Dunblane – in a respectable seaside town on the west coast of Lancashire merited a full public explanation."

"Millions of people thought that when they put their cross in the Leave box, they were going to get Boris, whom they love. Michael Gove and his team had a better idea. They shafted Boris by pulling their support from his campaign with about 11 minutes to go. In strategic terms, this was like murdering a puppy on Christmas Day. Boris's surprise withdrawal may have looked like an admission of defeat, but it was actually a brilliant tactical move which left Gove standing next to the puppy corpse holding a carving knife. Boris declaring his support for the fantastic Andrea Leadsom, Gove's main Leave rival, pretty much guaranteed that if Boris wasn't going to get the top job, neither was Judas."

"At first glance, the diverse candidates and supporters of the Brexit Party have little in common. What unites us, I suspect, is a sense that arrogant and unaccountable politicians in the capital have stopped making life better for the average family. Have stopped even caring. Through a combination of ineptitude and shortsightedness, and a maintenance of high immigration levels for the benefit of business, not local communities, politicians have murdered hope."

"[T]hat moment when the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom entered another party conference to Abba, dancing like a stork struck by lightning ... And still they didn't demand her resignation."

"What about the multiple charges against Boris – dreadful reputation, cavalier with detail – that were made during the questions at the end by BBC Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg, speaking with clear distaste on behalf of the Chattering Classes? Just in time, the playful Boris millions know and love emerged from solemn statesmen mode to gently rib the sanctimonious Ms Kuenssberg. Out of “that great minestrone of observations", he told her encouragingly, he had picked up "one crouton, that I have been inconsistent". It was funny, yet, at the same time, it could not have been more serious. Boris was signalling that he won't modify either his language, or his behaviour, to please a politically correct, censorious liberal minority. He will express, in language most people understand, the ideas they hold dear. The metropolitan elite will damn him as a "populist", which is another word for a persuader and a winner. We like winners."

"Hope. Conservatives haven’t had hope for a very long time. Honestly, they would be mad not to choose Boris. No one else comes close. Can he start tomorrow, please?"

"What a great victory this is for Boris Johnson. Who else could have fought the people's corner so magnificently? Tied down like Gulliver in Lilliput with a hundred Parliamentary amendments; every which way he moved the buggers blocked him."

"Just six months after she won her vote, [[Theresa May|[Theresa] May]] was forced out of office because people had cottoned onto the fact she was offering Brino (Brexit in name only). Johnson is a much better dissembler than May but, with slowly dawning horror, Tory voters have realised that the man who was once their hero is Cino – Conservative in name only. No wonder people are upset. We thought we were voting for Winston Churchill and we got the shifty offspring of Edward Heath and Greta Thunberg."

"Dimly through the silken trammels of Jan Morris's verbiage moves the figure of Elizabeth, James Morris's wife, now Jan Morris's sister-in-law, unsatisfied as a lover, deeply versed in the anguish and ambiguities of real womankind. So often when husbands are trumpeting one wonders what the silent wife is really thinking. In the same way, as Jan Morris plucks at your sleeve for a girlish heart to heart, you wonder about Elizabeth. Her unbroken silence is the truest measure Of Jan Morris's enduring masculinity."

"In her bigoted review [Thursday] of Jan Morris's Conundrum, which gets so many facts wrong Germaine Greer describes me as a silent and anguished figure. I am not very silent, and certainly not anguished The children and I not only love Jan dearly, but are also very proud of her — Elizabeth Morris, co Royal Commonwealth Society, Northumberland Avenue, WC2."

"For Jan did have a terribly conventional idea of what a woman was. In the book she delights in having doors held open for her, and she more than accepts being treated as the inferior and weaker sex, whatever her protestations that the world was changing. One gets the distinct impression that she would expect men to change a flat tyre for her."

"Deeper empathy, deeper understanding, I never saw or experienced – she was, I think, incapable of truly understanding the feelings of others, and thus appeared to care little about those feelings."

"There was something far more confusing, though. Jan had a very specific view of what constituted a "woman". First, a woman should train to be a secretary, next get married, then have babies and finally look after the family. In other words, a completely sexist view. I was brought up knowing this was what was expected of me; I was given no alternatives. My mother was this character."

"As I grew older, I couldn't come to terms with the fact that Jan wanted to be a "woman" when her view of "women" was totally the opposite of what she was. She wasn't at all maternal; she struggled to even give her own children a hug, stiffening to a board when we tried. She couldn't cook, I never saw her clean anything and she certainly didn't want to stay at home and be with her family. She disliked the very idea of "family". The honest fact is that she didn't want to be a woman, at least not the way she saw women. And still I couldn't talk to her about it all; I just got shut down. What did she want to be? I believe she wanted to be someone totally different from anyone else, a woman who was the centre of attention because of her difference. She was no ordinary woman, as she believed the rest of us were."

"[W]hat surprises me about Conundrum ... is that whereas I used to understand every word he wrote while I was a woman and he was a man, now that we are both women he mystifies me."

"One of these days, I feel sure, it is going to dawn on the world that the joys of the sexual act have been ludicrously overrated."

"But I should say I would never use the word change, as in "sex-change" for what happened to me. I did not change sex, I really absorbed one into the other. I'm a bit of each now. I freely admit it. There is obviously all of this debate about it all at the moment, but for me it was never a black and white thing. Never could be. It was a sort of instinct. A question of spirit almost. But that's all in that book I wrote, isn't it?’"

"To begin with, I did think so. I seemed to fear in myself more of a compassion towards detail rather than sweep, if you understand me. It seems to me I was exploring smaller things rather than larger things. But as the years have gone by, I seem perhaps simply to have widened to be moved equally by both, if you understand me, both by macrocosm and by microcosm. And that may be, again, another symptom of the fact that I've come to terms with what I am more completely than I had some years ago."

"I resist the idea that travel writing has got to be factual. I believe in its imaginative qualities and its potential as art and literature. I must say that my campaign, which I've been waging for ages now, has borne some fruit because intelligent bookshops nowadays do have a stack called something like travel literature. But what word does one use?"

"Well, it is a bit dated, isn’t it? Can we really suppose that a couple of thousand years from now human beings will still depend upon the messy and graceless business of coupling to produce their children or provide their physical satisfactions? Can we seriously envisage them writhing around in bed as we do, protecting ourselves with dangerous pills or distasteful apparatus against the primitive hazards of the practice? An unnoticeable implant, an untasteable tablet—such will be their means of procreation, and the clumsy indulgences of coitus will have long lost their purpose. How intriguing will seem, in the far, far future, the discredited organs of human intercourse! They will join the appendix and the prehensile toe as evidence of humanity's quaint crude origins."

"The truth is, you are talking to someone at the very end of things. I felt that first about two years ago. I felt it creeping up, and now I know I am approaching the end."