AS A row rages over female academics being treated less seriously than their male peers, writer Mary Ann Sieghart tells us the book market may be partially to blame. Men, she explained, “read four times as many books by men as books by women”.
“We assume a man knows what he’s talking about until he proves otherwise,” she continued, adding with a woman it is “all too often the other way round”.
Professor Suzannah Lipscomb recently hit out at newspaper coverage that referred to her without her title, while giving male academics theirs. Sieghart, who last year published a book, The Authority Gap, on a similar subject, revealed she had toyed with using a pseudonym for her work.
“I thought if I put MA Sieghart on the cover a) it will be a little joke about exactly what I’m writing about and b) it might actually persuade more men to read the book,” she said.
She also requested the cover “be very bold, very graphic, almost like a Lynx deodorant ad” so men wouldn’t be embarrassed to be seen reading it.
Slow progress post George Eliot.
Raise a glass to Iris’s beermats
WRITER Iris Murdoch had an unusual hobby: she collected beermats. When she died, a net shopping bag containing dozens was found among her effects. Inspired by her collection, a book celebrating the writer’s love of the boozer — Iris Murdoch’s Beermats — is crowdsourcing for publication. In it are many notable institutions which appear in her works, including Soho’s The Pillar of Hercules and Chiswick’s The Old Pack Horse. A character in one of her novels calls pubs “hallowed meeting places of all mankind”. We’ll drink to that.
Amfo’s Valentine gift to herself ...
VALENTINE’S DAY isn’t always about chocolates and flowers. “First grand romantic gesture was finally having a myomectomy to remove my fibroids,” wrote Radio 1 DJ Clara Amfo yesterday, sharing photos of herself recovering in hospital. “Fibroids are typically non-cancerous growths that develop in or around the womb and can cause all sorts of physical and mental distress,” she continues. The Londoner wishes Amfo, left, a speedy recovery.
Next stop, a Tube tribute to Cryer
THE campaign for a very London tribute to Barry Cryer gathers momentum. The much-loved comedian, who died last month, was a skilled player of the Mornington Crescent game on Radio 4’s I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. His family and luminaries including Michael Palin have called for a tribute to Cryer in the Tube station. Cryer was a regular at The Oldie’s lunches and its editor, Harry Mount, tells us he is behind the idea. Cryer used to repeat the Humphrey Lyttelton line, “Never lose touch with silly,” Mount says, adding: “He’s quite right. And we must never forget dear Barry.” Hear hear.
SW1A
GREEN peer Baroness Bennett drew laughs recently after asking the Government to introduce a “legal definition of sourdough bread”. But perhaps the mockery was unfair. Campaigners argue a definition is essential “to help protect the livelihoods of bakers who make genuine sourdough bread”. Answers kneaded.
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DINING in Westminster could be better, according to restaurant reviewer Tanya Gold, sent by The House magazine to rate Parliament’s food. “I do not know how anyone can work, let alone eat here,” she writes, calling the decor in one restaurant a “face-off of tat”. At dinner she heard a peer scream “Mouse!” Book elsewhere?
A Dickens twist at writers’ awards
Wordsmiths came together last night for the Writers’ Guild Awards. Succession writer Lucy Prebble was joined at the Royal College of Physicians by Billie Piper, Emerald Fennell and Samira Ahmed. Peep Show writer Simon Blackwell, who won for David Copperfield, was there with wife Jenny Dee. He said he was “delighted that Armando Iannucci, Charles Dickens and I got the best screenplay award”. Exalted company.
