Women Authors From England

"The white British population has decreased by 600,000, while the minority population has increased by 1.2 million. So yes, lads, we're winning!"

"Mama Sarkar didn't raise a diplomat."

"I'm on Team Hate."

"I'm literally a communist, you idiot."

"No ones saying that Jewish people don’t experience racism. That’s obviously true, especially online. But unlike me, you can *also* benefit from white privilege."

"The power hierarchy had white people of European descent sitting at the top. They believed themselves to be the natural winners, the inevitable heirs of great ancient civilizations. There are still many today who look at the world and imagine that the imbalances and inequalities we see are natural, that white Europeans have some innate superiority that allowed them to conquer and take the lead, and that they will have it forever. They imagine that only Europe could have been the birthplace of modern science, or that only the Europeans could have conquered the Americas."

"It was in 1680 that the English political theorist Sir Robert Filmer defended the by arguing in his ' that the state was like a family, meaning kings were effectively the fathers and their subjects, the children. The royal head of state was the ultimate earthly patriarch, ordained by God, whose authority went back to the patriarchs of biblical times. In Filmer's vision of the universe—an obviously self-serving one for an aristocrat—patriarchy was natural. It began small, in people's families, with the father having dominion over his household, and ended large, marbled through institutions of politics, law, and religion."

"De Beauvoir believed that the advent of private property was what had "dethroned" women; Saini argues that the causes of patriarchy are more complex, but identifies the rise of the first states as a significant turning point."

"If you were a geek growing up, you'll recognize how lonely it can be. If you were the female geek, you'll know it's far lonelier. By the time I reached my final years of school, I was the only girl in my chemistry class of eight students. I was the only girl in my mathematics class of about a dozen. And when I decided to study engineering at university, I found myself the only woman in a class of nine."

"If there are, as some tenets imply, a distinction of heavenly situations, will not this good-minded people occupy the first in rank; for nearest to the divine attributes of any thing you can have a conception of, is their kind-heartedness and probity. In a word, their manners are highly interesting, from their simplicity and liberal-mindedness; and I blush to feel how superior to all that Christianity can boast, of peace and goodwill towards men. ... I felt myself in danger of becoming a Braminate, though all the wealth of Indostan could not bribe me to become a Mahometan."

"One young man summed things up towards the desperate, tired end. "Is there any policy you can offer me that would positively impact my life?" he whinnied. The sense of hurt entitlement and rage: me, me, me. Is Sunak a political vending machine? That's where politics is now: give me what I demand at all times."

"You look at the litany of moaning and showboating — never more on display than last week at the empty fawnathon over poor Volodymyr Zelensky — and think: MPs are so out of touch with what ordinary people want, they’ll be giving themselves medals next. And that, as it happens, is exactly what some MPs are proposing. To say I howled when I read the recommendations in a new report about "supporting MPs at their point of departure from elected office" is to understate how horrifying and revealing it was."

"Why does Stanley Johnson even want a knighthood? ... Scan his CV and you will see how incredibly easy life has been for him. He comes from a generation of men for whom jobs, wives, money and houses fell like confetti — knighthoods grew on trees. You can still see the sheer power of this system in, say, the behaviour of Fiona Bruce on Question Time on Thursday, when she rushed to defend Stanley against accusations he'd abused his first wife: friends of his said it was a "one-off", she claimed. "He hit me many times, over many years," is in fact what Charlotte Johnson said not long before she died in 2021."

"I must say, as an avowed lifelong anti-monarchist myself, I find it tiresome when I am lumped in with speaking-clock part-timers like [[Steve Coogan|[Steve] Coogan]], Jeremy "Donkey Jacket@ Corbyn and the muppets from Republic, whose idea of a protest is off-the-peg Just Stop Oil-style stunting. They just don’t get it. If you truly want to get rid of the monarchy, it is a full-time job."

"It's weird when someone close to you is arrested. It's as if they’ve been deleted: there’s a stream of text messages as normal, and then there isn't. You think, at first: oh, he hasn’t got reception. Then you think: well, he can't still not have reception. Hertfordshire isn't Lapland. Where is he? For an hour I thought Ben had had a car accident and was unconscious in hospital or dead."

"[On lockdown and social distancing during the pandemic restrictions] It was fine. [...] I'm actually not that sociable, you know? I hate people. [...] That was a joke, for the record. [...] No. It's actually not a joke. It's not a joke."

"Why can't women just love having babies? Is it too laughable, parochial, bourgeois not to obsess over your career? If there is one thing I wish had been different at my hard, driven, academic school, it's that no one, not a single teacher, said to me: "Look, by the way, there's this thing that might happen in the middle of your life and it's going to be amazing. Make space for it, because it’s going to be a lot, lot better than getting 87 per cent in Latin." But no one ever did."

"The novelist Rachel Cusk has written a book about the collapse of her marriage which is, quite simply, bizarre."

"Cusk herself seems extraordinary — a brittle little dominatrix and peerless narcissist who exploits her husband and her marriage with relish. She tramples anyone close to her, especially [second husband [[w:Adrian Clarke (photographer)|Adrian] Clarke]], whom she has forced to give up his job in order to look after the kids."

"Perhaps the nastiest attack is reserved for someone outside the family: a description of a one-legged landlady who fails to provide Cusk with hot and cold running lattes on a riding holiday in Devon."

"Personally, I like his playful recklessness and feel quite certain that he would willingly show me his penis, given slightly different circumstances and a bucket of champagne. Stupid me for not asking — he admits, "I like getting naked"."

"I'm quite relieved that Nigel Farage MEP has only one testicle. When the former leader of the UK Independence party (UKIP) had the other removed in 1987 because of cancer, the doctors offered him an artificial replacement to give him "greater social confidence". But to watch him screaming at Herman Van Rompuy as he did last month, saying the European council president had the "charisma of a damp rag", tearing around with a loudhailer on his campaign to oust John Bercow, the Commons Speaker, from his Buckingham seat, working "100-hour weeks", inhaling whole packs of Rothmans and choffing down hundreds and hundreds of pints, I dread to think what he would be like with ... two."

"Actually, I'm feeling a little exhausted by the constant badinage — chatting with [[Piers Morgan|[Piers] Morgan]] is like endlessly throwing a stick for a demented borzoi, back and forth, back and forth, to the extent that after one particularly long and tiring session, I finally call him a tosser. He is thrilled: "Ha, ha, she cracks!" he says."

"She rips into her latest meat with all the poison and vigour of her earliest memoir, A Life's Work, an excoriating account of pregnancy and motherhood she wrote in 2001. She was flamed then by the critics for her self-absorption and fearlessness — and there's plenty to get the blood circulating in this book, too."

"The only genuine flash of insecurity comes halfway through the interview when I remember to congratulate him on his performance in Shame. But embarrassed? No, he is assured, confident, smooth, an actor of talent and depth. And I couldn’t help but notice he has an enormous penis, too. Would he have done the film if he was less well-endowed? "Ahhhh." His eyebrows shoot up. "That’s kind of you to say. I didn’t have any references to measure it against. I figured it was average." Average? Come on. "No! I’m serious. I don’t check out..." Other men at the gym? "I don’t really go to the gym," he shakes his head. "Obviously I figured I didn't really have a small penis. Would I have done it if I didn’t have whatever-sized penis? I didn’t think about that.""

"As the ceremony started and magic finally began to seep in, it became clear what sort of magic this was: it was the full panto, rabbit-out-of-the-hat, balloon-animal type of magic, rather than the divine right of kings."

"What have we done to deserve a man who slept with 2,000 women telling us what to think about politics, and a man who addresses the nation through his teddy telling us what to think about class? Some people say judge a society by the way it treats its women. Others say judge a society by the way it treats its prisoners. I say judge a society on the people it offers as its greatest thinkers. Our society’s leading public intellectual has admitted mistreating women and is famous for sticking a Barbie up his bottom on stage, so make what you will of that."

"first met Elizabeth David in 1984, or thereabouts, at Hilaire, the Chelsea restaurant of which he was chef. She came for supper with , and the widow of the poet was wearing – he remembers it vividly – a polka-dot dress. "I was very excited," he says. "Because I was a fan." ... at the end of her lunch, the young Hopkinson left his kitchen, clutching a copy of An Omelette and a Glass of Wine, David's collected journalism and the book of hers that he loves the most. She duly signed it for him, and so began a friendship that would last until she died in 1992."

"The Elizabeth David recipe that I love and remember the most is the delicious from her Italian Food book. It's just so different from all the traditional Bolognese sauces we're used to, but I actually think it's loads better. Using chicken livers to give a lovely earthy base to the sauce is genius, and I seem to remember she also did a variation with veal, which surprised me, but really works. There's butter in there instead of olive oil, which would mortify a few Italian nonnas, and also ham, but it's a fascinating way of recreating a classic sauce. All through my career, I've been inspired by female cooks – , of course; , , – and Elizabeth David is up there with the best."

"Those who make an occasional marketing expedition to or to the region of can buy Greek cheese and Calamata olives, from the Middle East, little birds preserved in oil from Cyprus, stuffed vine leaves from Turkey, Spanish sausages, Egyptian brown beans, chick peas, , Spanish, Italian, and Cypriot olive oil, Italian salame and rice, even occasionally Neapolitan Mozzarella cheese, and honey from . These are the details which complete the flavour of a Mediterranean meal, but the ingrediens which make this cookery so essentially different from our own are available to all; they are the olive oil, wines, lemons, garlic, onions, tomatoes, and the aromatic herbs and spices which go to make up what is so often lacking in English cooking: variety of flavour and colour, and the warm, rich, stimulating smells of genuine food."

"... I went on a short trip to and , to see an exhausting exhibition of Piedmontese baroque at , the former palace of the royal house of Savoy, and more enjoyably, to eat s and , white truffles with , white truffles and scrambled eggs, white truffles spread on bread and butter. My article Trufflesville Regis, was written rather hurriedly for the Spectator, and contained any number of Italian spelling mistakes. Nobody complained except the Italian friend I had been with on the trip. In due course she corrected them for me, and a second version of the article was published by in his Compleat Imbiber."

"People are going to be sent to prison for saying somebody's common soon, aren't they? Really. You can’t say anybody’s fat, you can’t say anybody’s anything, now. Not that one wants to say people are fat, but mind you, they are huge, aren’t they. Enormous. Enormous [...] I hate people being hurt. But nobody can say anything now. Anyway, enough of that [...] And all this [anti] wolf-whistling. I love being wolf-whistled at. I’m that generation. All contributions gratefully received."

"They are unbelievable the upper classes, aren't they? They just have to screw. They've always been like that. I suppose it has changed a bit today as they don’t want to get whatsitnamed [#MeToo'd]."

"I'm quite depressed about sex at the moment [...] I don't think people are having nearly so much fun. And everywhere you go, people are marrying their own sex, aren't they?"

"The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness, can be trained to do most things."

"[On meeting the editor of The Sunday Times magazine at a dinner party in 1969.] I told him about being a young wife: screwing all night, then going to work, shopping, doing the housework, doing one's husband's dinner, then screwing all night again."

"[In her novel, Score, a male character is murdered while sexually aroused.] I rang Stroud police to ask whether the male member stays up at the point of death. They told me it definitely does."

"This woke thing is awful. Have you ever been woked? You put a hand on somebody's shoulder and you're assaulting them. In the old days if someone was awful to you you'd tell them to eff off and that would be that. Still, I had some horrors in my time."

"[On the absence of condoms in her sex scenes.] I can't do that. When do you stop to put it on? They're awful. You see, because I never had babies [her two children are adopted], I never had to worry about all that. Actually, that's not true. I did, because I didn't know [that she couldn't have children]. I wish I had known. God, I'd have had fun. But you were absolutely terrified of getting pregnant. I was too early for the pill. I had a dutch cap. They were terrible. It used to fly across the room. I left it behind when I went on honeymoon. My mother had to send it on. I was never very organised."

"In its sights are those people who, even as they loudly proclaim their righteous politics, are apt to label older women as Karens and Terfs; who either roundly ignore or demonise the views of such women, however well-founded or based in experience; who write with open loathing of their bodies, their haircuts and their clothes; who struggle to acknowledge that they have benefited even the smallest bit from the legacy of those who went before them; who would, in effect, like women over the age of 45 either to shut up or to disappear altogether. It is, to be clear, a very good book, one that brilliantly and unrelentingly exposes all the weasel ways in which ageist misogyny enables regressive beliefs to be recast as progressive. In my eyes, it’s a future classic, up there with Joan Smith's Misogynies and Susan Faludi's Backlash. But it's also, I’m afraid, very painful to read. Like many women of my age and background, I feel myself to be approaching my zenith. How agonising to be reminded that, in some senses, this counts for nothing at all."

"[On Russell Brand and the allegations of sexual abuse made against him] And beyond this, the enabling. It seems clear that senior TV executives and many others knew of his reputation – you only had to have ears to know: his harassment of a BBC newsreader was broadcast live on air – and yet, no one ever stopped him. He had multiple chances. People – men, mostly – ask how this can be happening again. Operation YewTree, #MeToo: why isn't it time up, they ask? I share the weariness, though really, they've no idea: like most women, I've had decades of sexual harassment, of being talked over, and belittled, and patronised. But there's so much hypocrisy in play here; the same men won't listen – not properly – to women's concerns about their safety. Male indignation on this is extremely selective, and extremely limited. Dispatches found only one male comedian to talk about Brand and the way women on the comedy circuit have long warned each other about him: Daniel Sloss. (A hero to me now – and shame on any others who were approached and declined to speak.)"

"How many more dramas like this will be made? Why don't film-makers write fiction any more? What is wrong with our culture that stories about abused women are served up, like so much supper on a tea tray, week after week, month after month?"

"One of these stores is in Sheffield, where I grew up and where half my family still lives. It began its life in 1847 as a silk mercer whose proprietors were some brothers called Cole – the site of the original shop is still known as Coles Corner, a spot immortalised in the song by Richard Hawley – and thanks to this long history, people in the city are heartbroken at its imminent disappearance. (They are furious, too: it’s only six months since the council spent £3.4m buying its current building, the better that it might make its lease more affordable to John Lewis, which Coles became in 2002.) "Bad news," wrote my brother on WhatsApp after the closure was announced, a cue for us to remember its toy department, where as children we hankered after Lego, and its cafe, where we lived in hope of a vanilla slice (the cake stand rotated decorously, your hovering hand italicising your greed). On Twitter, the old photographs came thick and fast. My favourite, posted by the editor of the Sheffield Star, Nancy Fielder, was of the crowds at the opening of the store’s new building in Barker's Pool in 1963, the men in ties and flat caps, the women in cat's eye spectacles and mushroom-shaped hats."

"I feel quite private about the fact that I have cancer. As a friend put it, while lavish presents are most welcome, I don’t want to be squirted all over with pity. But the trouble is that I’m a writer: like Nora Ephron (I wish), for me (almost) everything is copy. I will keep outing myself, and making inappropriate jokes."

"But as he also points out, time teaches you that fame is relative. In 1983, [[w:Robert Lindsay|[Robert] Lindsay]] starred as Edmund in a Granada TV version of King Lear. "Larry Olivier, who was very poorly at the time, was Lear." he says. "And there we were in makeup. At Granada, there was this huge makeup trailer. At one end there was Larry in his crown, and sitting down the other end was Doris Speed, who played Annie Walker in Coronation Street." At a certain moment, Olivier rose from his seat – in Lindsay’s memory, it was a throne – and made his way slowly down to Speed. The trailer was silent. Everyone was agog. "He stood behind her, and he leaned into her mirror," says Lindsay. "And then he said [cue a pitch-perfect impression of Olivier]: 'My darling, on behalf of the theatrical profession, I'd like to congratulate you on a performance that has given such heart to the nation. It's real, it's humorous, and we love you so much. Congratulations, my darling, and thank you." Olivier then made his way back to his own seat, at which point Doris Speed looked up at her makeup artist and said: 'Who’s that?'""

"And who can blame them? After more than 370 pages, I began to feel half mad myself. At times, the world Barnes describes, with its genitalia fashioned from colons and its fierce culture of omertà, feels like some dystopian novel. But it isn’t, of course. It really happened, and she has worked bravely and unstintingly to expose it. This is what journalism is for."

"There's hard porn, soft porn and Jilly Cooper. Not that Mrs Cooper's latest little nonsense would get any Portnoy award, but I do worry about the influence on young minds of this peculiar combination of romantic fantasy and permissiveness (Barbara Cartland without the iron knickers). Fired by such goings-on as are chronicled in Octavia, heaven knows what the precociously pubescent will get up to."

"[On her novels] I know they are frivolous imperfect But people love them — you should see the letters I get! Maybe one day I will write something more serious but I don’t want to come across like a ghastly actor who wants to play Hamlet. Basically my aim in life is to add to the sum of human happiness My dear is that pompous hmmm? Darling am I being boring?"

"I saw this bright orange flash and thought this is it, my number has come up. There was a man above me who was talking about his wife, saying "I love you, Ellen, I love you". The train caved over and there was this terrific crash. It was only after we climbed out that we realised the full magnitude of what had happened - there were bodies, trains turned over, massive smoke and flames. I think all you think about at the time is "get me out of here". I was very lucky really - my carriage was the last but one on the train and although it turned over, people did not seem too bad."

"But increasingly "gender critical feminist" is simply becoming another term for members of the public who are not willing to put up with this madness."