This week’s Shelf Lifer, Mary Quant (pictured here in 1960s), invented both the mini-skirt and hot pants. If that weren’t enough, she later claimed to have invented the duvet cover. She tells us which part of the Bible she would take into solitary confinement and which character in Little Women gets her going. Her autobiography is out tomorrow.
1) As a child what did you read under the covers?
Enid Blyton – My father disapproved as it was fashionably thought to be bad English.
2) Has a book ever made you cry and if so which one?
Many books and most of all those by Amelia Ann Stiggins.
3) You are about to be put in solitary confinement for a year and allowed to take three books. What would you choose?
The Old Testament, War and Peace and Napoleon’s Fatal March by Adam Zamoyski.
4) Which literary character would you most like to sleep with?
Laurie from Little Women.
5) If you could write a self help book what would you call it?
‘Help – Or Send for Shirley Conran’
6) Michael Gove has asked you to rewrite the GCSE English Literature syllabus. Which book, which play and which poem would you make compulsory reading?
Any or all of Max Hastings’ books and Graham Greene’s books. All of P.J. Kavenagh’s poems and the play would be The Importance of Being Ernest.
7)) Which party from literature would you most like to have attended?
The Bollinger.
8) What would you title your memoirs?
Quant by Quant.
9) Which literary character do you dream of playing?
Nancy Mitford.
10) Which book would you give to a lover?
All Elizabeth David’s, Jamie Oliver’s, and Nigel Slater’s books so I would never have to cook again.
11) Spying Mein Dampf or Dan Brown on someone’s bookshelf can spell havoc for a friendship. What’s your literary deal breaker?
I don’t think there is one.
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