Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Writer and academic, best known for her feminist book on women's repression; feminism's most assured apostle.
On the island
Eight records
Choir of the Priory Church of Saint Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield, directed by Andrew Morris
Because it's my kind of anthem. It's actually about the sufferings of human beings rather than the sufferings of God about whom I've never been able to care very much.
Prologue to The Play of Daniel
Russell Oberlin, New York Pro Musica, directed by Noah Greenberg
that was one of the happiest times of my life. And the thing I love about this voice is we later sang with Alfredella, and I believe that most countertenors are in fact singing falsetto, but Russell Obelin is the real Lusus Naturae, he is a real countertenor.
Plácido Domingo with the Vienna Boys' Choir
I happen to go soft inside whenever I hear the voice of Placido Domingo… Everything I've ever dreamt of in the way of lusciousness.
L'Évaporée (from Pièces de clavecin, 15th book)Favourite
because it is so extremely cerebral and perfect.
Beim Schlafengehen (from Vier letzte Lieder)
It's a song about dying, and I'm very interested in the art of dying well.
Vuelvo a sacudir el continente
Silvio Rodríguez and Pablo Milanés
Silvio Rodríguez / Pablo Milanés
this boiling movement of popular ferment and optimism about the future… is lead from this tiny island of 10 million people who are telling El Continente to go jump in the lake.
It means something to me about the indomitability of the human spirit.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:59Do you find men are terrified of you?
No, not at all. I find mostly they ignore me without very much difficulty. And they also patronise me, which amazes me still. I still can't get used to it. In what way? Well, this thing of assuming that um you're in you asking them for something, or or, for example, you can't change a tyre. I change a tyre because I have a house in the country in Italy where we do a tyre a week. I can change a tyre in about four minutes flat. But men are always elbowing you out of the way and then taking twenty minutes, which is so irritating.
Presenter asks
9:15What did your parents do?
My mother got a tan, mostly full time. My father sold advertising space, which has always struck me as quite the most meretritious occupation any human being could ever have.
Presenter asks
10:38But why did you determine at such an early age to leave [Australia]?
Because it was so… And I just couldn't bear it. I just longed for beauty, actually. The Australian ugliness is pretty pervasive. And now that it's become kind of glossy American ugliness, it it's superficially more acceptable, but deeply more ugly.
The keepsakes
The book
But I don't have the Oxford English Dictionary, and that's the book that I would take.
The luxury
My hot spices, so that I can vary my diet a trifle on this island and give my shellfish a bit of a tingle from time to time.
Presenter asks
16:46How did you come to write The Female Eunuch? Was it a commission?
Yes, it was. Uh that story goes back to my relationship at Cambridge, my friendship at Cambridge with Sonny Mehta, the publisher. who asked me to have lunch with him one day after nice time had come to an end. And I told him in some with some miffedness actually, that my agent then had suggested that I write a book on the failure of women's emancipation, and I'd said to him, I do think that's a bit over the top really, because I don't think women's emancipation has happened, so how can you talk about it being failed? And he said, What do you mean? So I went on and on and beefed and whinged and carried on, and he said, That's the book I won. I'll draw up the contract to day.
Presenter asks
25:00What have you achieved? What's it all been about?
Well, I've never said I've achieved anything, because if women have changed their lives, they changed them. I didn't change them. And when women write to me saying you changed my life, I write back immediately saying I did not. And don't force that responsibility on me. If your life was changed, you changed it, not I. And I've never done wanted to do anything except what writers always want to do, which is to raise consciousness, to put ideas forward, to ma to give them a life and let them go and see what people do with them.
Presenter asks
29:51Which Germaine Greer do you prefer?
I don't think about her at all. I think she's a crashing bore. You know that diagram that used to be called Foo, which is just two eyes and a nose over a fence. I mean I see myself like that. But you must know, really, whether you would rather be seen, if you like, as the sage or the clown. I don't see the difference. And that's an important part of being who I am, I suppose. I think folly is a wise state to be in. And I used to say to my students at school, always, at the university, what I'm trying to do is confuse you. When you are confused, you'll have begun to understand. As long as you are not confused, you haven't begun to think. And that's how I think of my mental activity.
“I change a tyre in about four minutes flat. But men are always elbowing you out of the way and then taking twenty minutes, which is so irritating.”
“I agree with Larkin, you know, my childhood is a a long remembered boredom.”
“I think any sensible woman would be a lesbian. Women are so easy to love.”
“I've never said I've achieved anything, because if women have changed their lives, they changed them. I didn't change them.”