Fay Weldon

thumb|right|Appearing with Gerard Casey on British television discussion programme After Dark in 1997 Fay Weldon, CBE, FRSL (born Franklin Birkinshaw; 22 September 1931 – 4 January 2023) was an English novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist. An American movie adaptation of her novel The Life and Loves of a She-Devil was filmed as She-Devil. Quotes Go to work on an egg. Advertising slogan originated by the Mather & Crowther agency for the British Egg Marketing Board, and used from 1957. Fay Weldon wrote to Nigel Rees in 1981: "I was certainly in charge of copy [at Mather & Crowther] at the time…Who invented it, it would be hard to say. It is perfectly possible, indeed probable, that I put those six particular words together in that particular order but I would not swear to it." (The "Quote…Unquote" Newsletter, July 1992, p. 2). Fortunately, there is more to life than death. There is for one thing, fiction. A thousand thousand characters to be sent marching out into the world to divert time from its forward gallop to the terrible horizon. Down Among the Women (Harmondsworth: Penguin, [1971] 1973) p. 172. The New Women! I could barely recognize them as being of the same sex as myself…They are satiated by everything, hungry for nothing. They are what I wanted to be; they are what I worked for them to be: and now I see them, I hate them. Praxis (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1978) p. 9. I wonder if my shrink (sorry, psychiatrist) was a woman not a man I'd be in a better or worse state? The Heart of the Country (1987) Young women especially have something invested in being nice people, and it's only when you have children that you realise you’re not a nice person at all, but generally a selfish bully. The Independent on Sunday (5 May 1991). Widows tend either to fade away when husbands die, committing emotional suttee, or else find that a new life burgeons. Here in Christchurch, a lot of burgeoning goes on. "'Only one way out of here'" The Guardian (28 October 2006). I like sex. I've had feedback but men will feed you back anything, won't they? "This much I know: Fay Weldon", The Observer Magazine (30 August 2009). One sort of believes in recycling. But one believes in it as a kind of palliative to the gods. "This much I know: Fay Weldon", The Observer Magazine (30 August 2009). Nothing happens, and nothing happens, and then everything happens. Life Force (1992), cited in Kakutani Michiko 7 February 1992 Books of The Times; Fallout From a Multitude of Liaisons https://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/07/books/books-of-the-times-fallout-from-a-multitude-of-liaisons.html The New York Times 12 February 2020 About Weldon [Published shortly after Weldon died in January 2023] Twenty years ago, I was dispatched to interview Weldon at home in Hampstead, north London. Her then husband, Nick, answered the door and immediately began a brutal interrogation. My name sounded familiar. Hadn't I given Fay's novel The Bulgari Connection, a book controversially sponsored by the Italian jeweller, a stinking review? Uh oh. But I wasn’t about to confess: I had a job to do. Was it definitely me he was thinking of? And was the review really a stinker? Maybe marital loyalty had made it seem worse than it was.The interview began. Fay and I were getting along just fine when the door burst open. In strode her husband, in his hand a copy of the dreaded review, extracts from which he proceeded to read aloud as my entire body turned crimson (though I have to admit – icy chip and all that – I was also thinking what a good anecdote this would make later). As for Fay, a woman who understood revenge, she was enjoying herself mightily. "She's very hard, isn’t she?" she said to Nick, smiling like a goblin. "She's very difficult. She probably didn't like it because it didn't have any sex in it." And then: "Look, you've embarrassed the poor girl now." His work done, Nick left the room and we resumed, as if nothing had happened. Rachel Cooke "I learned the hard way that Fay Weldon was as sharp-witted as her characters" The Observer (7 January 2023) External links Fay Weldon at IMDb. Category:1931 births Category:2023 deaths Category:Academics from the United Kingdom Category:Feminists from England Category:Playwrights from England Category:Screenwriters from England Category:Short story writers from England Category:Anglicans from the United Kingdom Category:Novelists from England Category:People from Birmingham Category:Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature Category:Women authors from England Category:Women journalists from England Category:Women born in the 1930s Category:University of St. Andrews alumni Category:Commanders of the Order of the British Empire