Autobiographers From England

"But Gary [Glitter] has not tried to sell them [images of child pornography], not tried to show them in public or anything like that. It were for his own gratification. Whether it was right or wrong is, of course, it's up to him as a person. But they didn't do anything wrong but they are then demonised. If you said to that copper, what's Gary Glitter done wrong? Well nothing really. He's just sat at home watching dodgy films."

"[When asked if "rumours that he had been a psychopath, practised necrophilia and was into young girls might turn out to be true" in 2001.] Bollocks to my legacy [...[ If I'm gone that's that . . . Whatever is said after I'm gone is irrelevant."

"I drive up to Woodlands Cemetery and work out from newspaper photos where Savile’s grave must be. His headstone – a vast granite triptych with the inscription It Was Good While It Lasted, a DJ’s last glib jingle – was pulverised at midnight two years before, its fragments used for landfill. Someone appears to have laid a single flower on the grassy knoll, unless the wind filched a tribute from an undisgraced grave. A tag with the council logo is tied on the fence behind, in line with the mound. Is that so they know where he is in case of exhumation or removal? Others seem to be following this ghoulish route; a group arrive as I leave. There is a sense of not being able to believe the scale of the fall until seeing what was an extravagant shrine (to a man called “a saint” in BBC coverage) but is now just scruffy lawn."

"Although already well advanced on becoming one of history’s most prolific criminal sex offenders, Savile shows a peculiar proclivity for public near-confession. In his book God’ll Fix It, he admits to being “an abuser of things and bodies and people”, a formula that can in retrospect allude to both sexual abuse and necrophilia (“bodies” and “people” are oddly differentiated). Elsewhere in God’ll Fix It, he repeats his regular hope (also expressed in many interviews) that his good works will provide enough “on the credit side” for God Almighty to overlook the “debit side”. As he boasts that the black lines in the ledger add up to tens of millions of charitable donations, he is effectively confessing that the red entries have nearly equal value. How much bad would you need to do to require so much good? At the time, it never occurs to us his accounting is absolutely precise."

"Savile was a highly unusual personality whose lifestyle, behaviour and offending patterns were equally unusual. As a result of his celebrity, his volunteering, and his fundraising he had exceptional access to a number of NHS hospitals and took the opportunities that that access gave him to abuse patients, staff and others on a remarkable scale. Savile's celebrity and his roles as a volunteer and fundraiser also gave him power and influence within NHS hospitals which meant that his behaviour, which was often evidently inappropriate, was not challenged as it should have been. Savile's ability to continue to pursue his activities without effective challenge was aided by fragmented hospital management arrangements; social attitudes of the times, including reticence in reporting and accepting reports of sexual harassment and abuse, and greater deference than today towards those in positions of influence and power; and less bold and intrusive media reporting. While it might be tempting to dismiss the Savile case as wholly exceptional, a unique result of a perfect storm of circumstances, the evidence we have gathered indicates that there are many elements of the Savile story that could be repeated in the future. There is always a risk of the abuse, including sexual abuse, of people in hospitals. There will always be people who seek to gain undue influence and power within public institutions including in hospitals. And society and individuals continue to have a weakness for celebrities. Hospital organisations need to be aware of the risks posed by these matters and manage them appropriately."

"I struggle to write the next paragraph but [Janet] Smith, in her section 5: 262, records what happened with the pellucid neutrality of legal prose: He said “hello” to everyone except [Saville’s victim, legally codenamed] C23. Then he stood beside her, grabbed her round the waist with his right hand, put his legs round her left thigh (so that her leg was between his two legs) and rubbed his crotch up and down. So far as C23 can remember, he did not say anything. She felt that he was giving a performance. Fortunately Mr Lawson saw what was happening, came over and distracted Savile, then positioned himself between Savile and C23. The interview took place. There is one detail Smith omits for the proper reason that it is experienced by a witness not a victim. When I block Savile, he is furious, thwarted. His strength is extraordinary for a man four months away from 80 but I have enough height and heft to hold him off, though not without briefly feeling his erection against my leg. (Many have suggested that his favoured baggy leisure wear was doubly calculated for easy removal and to advertise his arousal to his prey without doubt.) Let me be clear that this experience is nothing at all compared to the impacts on his victims, but it is a weird memory to have and gives me some tiny insight into the suffering he inflicted."

"I was in my wheelchair, but I just remember [Savile's] hands being everywhere and just lingering those two, three, four seconds slightly too long in places they shouldn't [...] It was in a busy room full of people in a studio so it was quite discreetly done and you don't kind of realise what's happening at the time, especially when you're 14 and it's the first time you've ever been in a studio and you're very excited. But I do remember feeling uncomfortable and he had these huge rings on his fingers."

"Now then, guys and gals."

"[[w:Marjorie Wallace (SANE)|[Marjorie] Wallace]] remembers witnessing a brief encounter while visiting the twins. "Jimmy Savile jumped up onto this table," she said. "He looked at the two girls, pointed and said to June 'I’ll have you firs' and then to Jennifer 'you’ll be second'." "I said, 'Jimmy, you better get off,' and he just jumped off. And that's when the two girls pointed to their heads and said, 'We thought we were the mad ones'." She added: "I felt a chill when I looked into his eyes … I wrote to the Department of Health, expressing great concern about his behaviour in Broadmoor. I got nowhere.""

"It was good while it lasted."

"The expression which I came to associate with Savile's sex partners was either one used by production assistants or one I made up to summarise their reports ... "under-age subnormals". He targeted the institutionalised, the hospitalised – and this was known. Why did Jimmy Savile go to hospitals? That's where the patients were."

"When you’re doing Top of the Pops and Radio 1, what you don't do, is assault women, they assault you, that's for sure, and you don't have to, because you've got plenty of girls about, and all that, so dealing with something like this, is out of the question and totally wrong, full stop"

"My business, there's women looking for a few quid, we always get something like this coming up for Christmas, because we want a few quid for Christmas, right. And normally you can brush them away like midges and it’s not much of a price to pay for the lifestyle."

"My dad, Vince, who was a bookmaker's clerk, gave me a drag on one [a cigar] at Christmas, thinking it would put me off them forever, but it had the opposite effect."

"Savile was a callous, opportunistic, wicked predator who abused and raped individuals, many of them patients and young people, who expected and had a right to expect to be safe. His actions span five decades – from the 1960s to 2010."

"An interviewer once asked what I did as part of my voluntary work [there] and I said, "Everything, from taking milk into the wards, to taking the lately deceased from the wards," and that suddenly became "he’s into" necrophilia. But that doesn’t bother me at all."

"Anthony Clare asked me my feelings towards children, and I said, "I couldn't eat a whole one . . . I hate them!" [...] But that is because I want to shut up someone who's trying to go down that dirty, sordid road with questions like that."

"[T]here have been trains and, with apologies to the hit parade, boats and planes (I am a member of the 40,000ft club) and bushes and fields, corridors, doorways, floors, chairs, slag heaps, desks and probably everything except the celebrated chandelier and ironing board[.]"

"[After being informed of an unnamed 1960s pop singer sleeping with 12 to 14 year olds.] Yes. I would never have time to excuse anything like adults being into children. In fact I'd rather not even opinionate on this. I’ll leave it to the Anthony Clares of this world to sort out the psychology of child abuse. But I will stand up and say this sort of thing is sickening, not part of my world at all."

"As a nation at that time we held Savile in our affection as a somewhat eccentric national treasure with a strong commitment to charitable causes. [...] Today's reports show that in reality he was a sickening and prolific sexual abuser who repeatedly exploited the trust of a nation for his own vile purposes."

"[When asked about his freedom from emotional attachment to other people.] The tough thing in life is ultimate freedom, that's when the battle starts. Ultimate freedom is what it's all about, because you've got to be very strong to stand for ultimate freedom. Ultimate freedom is the big challenge, now I've got it, and I can tell you there's not many of us that have got ultimate freedom. I've got some considerable clout as well, all over. That is where the battle, the personal battle starts now. I've managed to handle complete and ultimate utter freedom. It's marvellous but it's dangerous. It would be easy to be corrupted by many things, when you've got ultimate freedom, especially when you've got clout. I could be corrupted."

"[As a nightclub manager in Leeds, late 1950s] A high-ranking lady police officer came in one night and showed me the picture of an attractive girl who had run away from a remand home. "Ah," says I, all serious, "if she comes in I'll bring her back tomorrow but I'll keep her all night first as my reward." The law lady, new to the area, was nonplussed. Back at the station she asked "Is he serious?" It is God's truth that the absconder came in [to the club] that night. Taking her into the office, I said, "Run now if you want but you can't run for the rest of your life." She listened to the alternative and agreed that I hand her over if she could stay at the dance, come home with me, and that I would promise to see her when they let her out. At 11.30 the next morning she was willingly presented to an astounded lady of the law. The officeress was dissuaded from bringing charges against me by her colleagues, for it was well known that, were I to go, I would probably take half the station with me."

"Once you’re head of a public company you are expected to perform; you’re like an unpaid greyhound on a racetrack called the stock market. They’d take bets on us, but not add anything at all."

"The modern theory that you should always treat the religious convictions of other people with profound respect finds no support in the Gospels. Mutual tolerance of religious views is the product not of faith, but of doubt."

"Once you’ve been naked in a room full of 300 people, nothing scares you. I’m not saying everyone should become a stripper but forcing yourself to do something terrifying can change your life. You realise you can do anything."

"Most men – not just the men in Brentwood – are scared of powerful women with brains. There’s something in a man that makes him want to have power over a woman – whether it’s in the bedroom or because they earn more money. It boosts their egos."

"I am only known for my boobs and tats."

"I'd got to the end of my tether with the negative press. There's only so much you can take of every single day hearing yourself being called a slag or a bitch or a slapper or ugly or thick or whatever it is they're calling me. You kind of get to a point where you just don't want it any more."

"For quite a while I did feel like my brain wasn't being used at all. Obviously, when you're just modelling, you do feel a bit almost brain-dead, where you need something to stimulate you mentally and you're not getting it."

"I could've been a lawyer by now, I could've gone to uni. But I've taken the quickest and easiest route to making as much money as I can, and having as much fun as I can, and I don't regret that."

"I just think it's double standards the whole time. On the one hand people say, 'Oh, women have equal rights now, women can be as powerful as men and do the same jobs as men', but we're still not allowed to talk about sex, 'cos that's unladylike. It's like that old thing, if a man has slept with loads and loads of women, he's a stud. But if a woman has slept with loads of boys, she's a slag. Well, why? Why? What makes a man a stud 'cos he's pulled loads of women? And what makes me a slag 'cos I've slept with more than 10 men? It's ridiculous!"

"They build people up into this huge thing on the front pages that's talked about every day, like Sienna Miller, say, and then they just turn, they have had enough of you."

"For so long I hid behind the blonde hair and the blue eyes. Now I feel like I've done it, I've done what I set out to achieve, now I can just go back to being me."

"We also know that Julian too received frequent visitors, as is attested by the autobiography of another fervent Christian of her time, Margery Kempe, who went to Norwich in 1413 to receive advice on her spiritual life"

"Margery was more of a religious hysteric than a mystic. But she gives a vibrant account of her life as a woman to whom religion and weeping were as attractive as sex was to the Wife of Bath."

"As an intimate record of personal religious experience it has few equals. The marks of accuracy, sincerity, and reality are stamped on every page."

"The Book of Margery Kempe tells the story of one woman’s spiritual journey in Medieval England over a twenty-five year period, describing her quest to establish spiritual authority as a result of her personal conversations with Jesus and God. Whilst the text is written in the third person, it is generally acknowledged to be the first autobiography written in the English language...Kempe’s story relates not only Margery’s struggle to achieve some form of divine spirituality, but also her polarised reception within society. Some, most notably religious authority figures, revered Margery as a holy mystic, whilst others, mainly commoners, rejected and slandered her as a devil worshiper."

"Sche cam beforn the Erchebischop and fel down on hir kneys, the Erchebischop seying ful boystowsly unto hir, "Why wepist thu so, woman?" Sche, answeryng, seyde, "Syr, ye schal welyn sum day that ye had wept as sor as I.""

"Sometimes she felt sweet smells with her nose; it was sweeter, she thought, than ever was any sweet earthly thing that she smelled before…Sometimes she heard with her bodily ears such sounds and melodies that she might not well hear what a man said to her in that time unless he spoke the louder. These sounds and melodies had she heard nearly every day for the term of twenty-five years…She saw with her bodily eye many white things flying all about her on every side, as thick in a manner as motes in the sun; they were right delicate and comfortable, and the brighter that the sun shone …Also our Lord gave her another token, which endured about sixteen years, and it increased ever more and more, and that was a flame of fire wonderfully hot and delectable and right comfortable, not wasting but ever increasing of flame, for, though the weather was never so cold, she felt the heat burning in her breast and at her heart, and verily as a man should feel the material fire if he put his hand or his finger therein"

"Kempe describes, in this extract and elsewhere, what could be construed as classic psychotic symptoms; visions, auditory, olfactory and tactile hallucinations, grandiose delusions, self-neglect (Margery’s penances of fasting, being inadequately clothed), social withdrawal (from her family and friends), and feelings of passivity and control. Yet it does not feel like madness. Why not? What Kempe describes to us is a truly embodied spiritual experience. Kempe has no doubt about this, and it is this unshakeable belief that communicates itself down the centuries through the text...the question remains as to how Kempe manages to convey the phenomenological intensity of Margery’s experience twenty or more years after the event? First, Kempe is an expert storyteller, and it is likely that she retold such narratives as discussed here on many occasions to many people, clergy and fellow pilgrims, through oral testimony and public performance. Second, central to the orthodox liturgy, is the conception that devotional words uttered are expressed through the senses. Extreme emotion which, in modern times, is viewed as a sign of mental instability, was a fundamental feature of spirituality, conveying both the seriousness and truth of the religious experience...With this knowledge, when we return to Kempe’s text, we can listen to Margery’s voice within a framework more akin to medieval England than the twentieth century West. Margery’s sensory experiences are not without cultural and historical provenance, rather she draws upon a range of mystical sources grounded in religious and cultural traditions known throughout medieval Europe. Kempe’s embodied descriptions cease to be tactile or olfactory hallucinations or grandiose ideas (marriage to God), but become experiences that result from spiritual passion. As Porter argues “it would serve no purpose to label such exercise of spiritual discipline as a psychiatric disorder” (Porter, 1988: 44). As argued earlier, religiosity was sanity, whereas madness amounted to a refusal to accept the truth that was God. Furthermore, Margery’s experiences are intelligible not only in terms of religious traditions, but also in her terms of her career; Kempe construes Margery as a holy mystic"

"On a nygth, as this creatur lay in hir bedde wyth hir husbond, sche herd a sownd of melodye so swet and delectable, hir thowt, as sche had ben in paradyse. And therwyth sche styrt owt of hir bedde and seyd, "Alas, that evyr I dede synne, it is ful mery in hevyn.""

"Kempe was psychotic for much of her adult life...Kempe continued to have psychotic symptoms throughout the remainder of her life...[her] account provides the modern reader with a unique opportunity to hear the voice of a woman with serious mental illness who lived 600 years ago"

"Pacyens is more worthy than myraclys werkyng."

"Given this mixture of affective and schizophrenic features a modern psychiatric diagnosis for Margery Kempe would most likely be ‘schizoaffective psychosis’, precipitated in the first instance by childbirth"

"[Wight] failed many of his classes on the first try: surgery, pathology, physiology, histology, even animal husbandry (which he failed twice)"

"He straightened up. This was a tough one. He folded his arms across his chest as he stared into space and took the long inhalation I remembered so well, I could see that he was a big man again, his shoulders spreading wide, his face ruddy and well-fleshed."

"There was no last animal I treated. When young farm lads started to help me over the gate into a field or a pigpen, to make sure the old fellow wouldn't fall, I started to consider retiring. The great moment was one day when I was stitching up a cow's teats--they often get cut, you know--and my glasses were sliding down my nose. Suddenly I thought, Wight, you're too old for this. But it was a gradual transition. I just did less and less. It must be terrible to have a job you very much love chopped off."

"Cats are connoisseurs of comfort."

"If a farmer calls me to a sick animal, he couldn't care less if I were George Bernard Shaw."

"For years I used to bore my wife over lunch with stories about funny incidents. The words 'My book,' as in 'I'll put that in it one day,' became a sort of running joke. Eventually she said, 'Look, I don't want to offend you, but you've been saying that for 25 years. If you were going to write a book, you'd have done it. You're never going to do it now. Old vets of 50 don't write books.' So I purchased a lot of paper right then and started to write."