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BS: Maeve Binchy in her own words
| keberoxu | 25 Jan 16 - 05:51 PM | |
| GUEST,# | 26 Jan 16 - 11:09 AM | |
| Jack Campin | 26 Jan 16 - 11:12 AM | |
| GUEST,# | 26 Jan 16 - 11:46 AM | |
| keberoxu | 26 Jan 16 - 01:40 PM | |
| keberoxu | 26 Jan 16 - 02:30 PM | |
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BS: Maeve Binchy in her own words
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Subject: BS: Maeve Binchy in her own words From: keberoxu Date: 25 Jan 16 - 05:51 PM Maeve Binchy's books are feel-good books, and I read them because I like feeling good....she is more tolerant of human nature than I am. So after her passing, when a book was published of her columns for the Irish Times, I wondered what such a warm-hearted, tactful writer would have to say about Margaret Thatcher. HEADING FOR THE HUSTINGS April 4, 1992 (and probably under copyright) ....it also reminds me of the great happiness of going back to school, knowing that a hated teacher has gone, you can hardly dare to believe it. She won't be there in the houndstooth suit baying at the back of the hall, turning with reptilian cunning to the cowering ministers on either side saying those dreaded words, 'I think that's one for you, Home Secretary, or Chancellor,' addressing any number of men whose nervous systems and political futures she unsettled over the years. ....I think the place is far better without her, and for once she may have done the wisest thing by leaving town. Because she sure as hell did everything else wrong a year and a half ago when she was leaving. She waited to be booted out....She should have gone six months earlier, and sat watching them running around like headless rabbits, tearing each other to bits. [Ahem. Rabbits? Since when do RABBITS tear each other to bits? Dunno about that one.] That's what I would have done. I would have sat there with a false smile playing around my chops, saying that I was absolutely certain that they'd all manage much better without me....But then she's not the only politician who stayed too long in these islands.... She would not be human if she did not feel some small satisfaction at the way that the boys in the nursery are messing it all up, now that Nanny has been sacked. She would not be normal if she did not take a small frisson of pleasure from the polls. But had she only gone in time, she could have been regarded forever as the Monarchy in Exile, and she could have had her ego massaged until she lived to be a hundred. But she's gone, and though her shadow hangs over the country she ruled for so long with such certainty and so little self-doubt, she will not be a consideration this time round. [to be redundant: Maeve Binchy] ["Reptilian cunning." THAT'S a good one.] |
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Subject: RE: BS: Maeve Binchy in her own words From: GUEST,# Date: 26 Jan 16 - 11:09 AM " [Ahem. Rabbits? Since when do RABBITS tear each other to bits? Dunno about that one.] " Here ya go. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Maeve Binchy in her own words From: Jack Campin Date: 26 Jan 16 - 11:12 AM ["Reptilian cunning." THAT'S a good one.] That's why they made that biopic "V" about her - changing her name to "Diana" was a neat sidestep. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Maeve Binchy in her own words From: GUEST,# Date: 26 Jan 16 - 11:46 AM Great series it was, too. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Maeve Binchy in her own words From: keberoxu Date: 26 Jan 16 - 01:40 PM And then she wrote: 'ONE UP FOR THE CARDIGANS' February 12, 2005 The news programme announces the engagement in the little minimarket....And the large, comfortable woman who sits like a wise old bird at the checkout is very pleased. 'It's one up for the cardigans,' she says. 'I knew the day would come when a woman as shabby as myself would marry a prince.' ....all the television channels had wheeled in the ageing royal-watchers. They were brought out of mothballs and dusted down and wound up to go. I know what I'm talking about; I was one of them. Queen Elizabeth II has four children. I was at three of their weddings and I didn't bring any of them much luck....I am sure Charles and Camilla will...make a go of it. And truly, most people of goodwill will wish them happiness.... But it's such a different scene this time around. I wonder whether Charles, in his very narrow world, knows this....surrounded as he is by sycophants and by people who grew up in the same strange enclosed world as himself, where journalists are called 'reptiles' and where there are the People Who Matter and then the rest of the world, which doesn't matter a bit. He must think he is a scream, because I have seen the awful, fawning, servile press, really worse than reptiles, laughing hysterically if he makes a stupid joke....He has no loving family to lean on. His parents never went to visit him when he was at that terrible school, Gordonstoun. Do you know anyone who was NEVER visited at boarding school by their parents?....Then, somewhere along the line, somebody taped his intimate conversation with Camilla years ago and broadcast it to the world. That was the only day I felt really sorry for Charles. I could have wept for his sheer embarrassment as I saw him on television straightening his cuffs and going to see his mother, who was after all the queen of the country that was rocking to his bizarre sexual fantasies. Strange as they were, they were his and Camilla's own business. So the man who will presumably one day be king may not have a clue how his future subjects think of him and his wedding.... I am basically a big custard heart. I don't know these people at all. I've watched them for three decades, notebook in hand, but I don't know them or know anybody who knows them. But I am interested in their love story. I think Charles is arrogant and selfish, but the roots of that lie in his upbringing. I think Camilla is basically a decent and horsey cardigan who...is prepared to go through all this from the sheer accident of falling in love with [Charles]....it must be painful and hurtful when she is compared to her beautiful, warm, but deeply unhappy predecessor.... I can't be the only person in the world who doesn't think hereditary monarchy is a good idea but who still does genuinely wish these two confused middle-aged people a great wedding day and good time together. [Maeve Binchy] |
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Subject: RE: BS: Maeve Binchy in her own words From: keberoxu Date: 26 Jan 16 - 02:30 PM relevant to the first post in the thread: MAEVE ON MARGARET THATCHER, June 19, 1986 ...as she sails towards her 61st birthday in the autumn with the firm intention of trying for a third term of office, the gosh-imagine-a-woman-Prime-Minister excitement has worn off. ....A woman barrister who knew her at Lincoln's Inn in the early fifties says, 'I cannot take her seriously as leader of this country because I remember her so well 30 years ago. She was fearfully impatient, quick yes, and bright but if everyone else doesn't understand every single thing immediately she goes spare. I can't think how she manages the Cabinet meetings. Just to discuss a case with her in the old days had us all in a frazzle....' A woman television executive who has seen her on several television programmes speaks of her with something like awe. 'She comes in here, her make-up is perfect, I mean it's not just good make-up, she has had a proper professional television make-up at home or in the office or in the car, I don't know where. Nor do I know how she gets the time. So it means that she doesn't have to spend any time at all being made up here and that gives her a certain importance. All the men are being powdered and toned down and she is sitting there calm as anything.... 'She may be dying for a drink, but she won't have one, nor a sandwich or anything and we bring out nice ones when she's on. She says, "No, thank you," she doesn't eat between meals, and you know that in her whole life she never has, any more than she ever went to bed with her make-up on. She will just smile at you coldly if you praise her and you realise that she has little time for anyone, like 99 per cent of the world, who are human enough to have a Scotch and a sandwich either before or after an important television programme.' She just doesn't rate people who aren't as strong as she is. A woman publisher....says that she thinks the Prime Minister's much-vaunted courage within her own party is a distinct disservice to the cause of women rather than giving women something to crow about. 'Look here, we get a woman Prime Minister, who got in by turning on the guy who gave her all the honours and preferments. Sure I know that's politics, but it's also a characteristic that is often attributed to women, disloyalty, spitefulness. 'Then when she's in, what does she do? It's like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, Off With Their Heads. Stevas, Ian Gilmour, Jim Prior, Francis Pym, Cecil Parkinson, anyone who looks crooked at her or who has a bit on the side. Now if a man did that, we'd be up in arms and so we should about her too. She's making it harder and harder for any party to elect a woman again, they'll have had their worst fears about bossy women confirmed in this administration. She may have the distinct achievement of being the first and the last woman Prime Minister of this country.' A woman who worked with her in the Ministry of Education and always spoke highly of her said that she thought that [Thatcher's] remark about 'at least one person who will stand by you....and understand what you were trying to do, even when nobody else seemed to' was a very sad one indeed. She didn't find it human and showing the tender side of Margaret Thatcher. She thought it showed the hard and empty side. 'Most women have a friend or many friends who will be loyal to them, believe the best [of them], and put the most optimistic slant on what they do. It's a sad comment on Margaret, that after all her years and doing what she believes is right, that she only has her husband. She makes no mention of her children. And her children are not close to her and now they realise she was never close to them. It's a frightful object lesson of the loneliness of power-seeking. I hope she doesn't put all women off trying to succeed in any field.' There's a shop not far from where I live where the daughter of the family is extremely bright and has ambitions to do law....'We aren't people like that, we're greengrocers,' [her family] tell her, as if this was the last word on the subject. 'But look at Mrs. Thatcher,' the girl was unwise enough to say. "Her father was a grocer in Lincolnshire, and look at her.' 'Yeah, look at her,' they all say, and heads shake and somehow she feels that no real battle has been won for her by the woman Prime Minister. [Maeve Binchy] |
