On telly, Andrew Marr described the student protest held at Downing Street as "better than a double chemistry lesson". My daughter was livid: she was one of those protesters
In 15th-century Florence, you could tell the prostitutes on the streets from their uniform. The law decreed that they wear gloves and especially high-heeled shoes (the tap on the cobbles no doubt contributing to a frisson of fetishism) and carry little bells. My own uniform over the past week or so has been rather more subtle, but the purpose has been the same: to sell myself. You can see me coming by the novel I'm holding in one hand and the press release in the other. The New Statesman's editorial office, however, made it clear they would have none of this. You can write a diary, but don't just write all about your own book. OK. Let's talk politics and history instead.
Anything familiar in this story? In the 1490s, an ascetic fundamentalist monk (middle class, born and bred) is welcomed by the ruler of Florence, Lorenzo de' Medici, into the monastery of San Marco, endowed and financed by the de' Medici family. Their mutual admiration sours quickly. Using the monastery as his base, this thin, hook-nosed, wild-eyed priest with zero charm but huge presence claims to have a hotline to God through which he expresses his contempt and hatred for the impurity and decadence of the Renaissance world he finds around him.
When Lorenzo's son Pietro comes to power, Savonarola launches unmerciful attacks on him and his government, using the promise of paradise to build support among a population many of whom are too poor to benefit from the new wealth, and whose only hope of riches comes from the next world rather than this.
When Savonarola takes over the government in the mid-1490s, the state becomes a militant theocracy. The multiculturalism of the classical revival is denounced as pagan and the emerging capitalist culture, with its new art and fashion, is damned as the work of the devil. But the monk's greatest wrath is reserved for matters of gender and sins of the flesh. Women are his first target. They are excluded from church while he preaches on the Godly state and are sent back into the home, where they must "be chaste, obedient and silent". If they do go out on the street, it is under a strict dress code. Even worse is the treatment of homosexuals. (Of whom there are a considerable number in Florence; a society that seeks to marry young virgins to men in their early thirties implicitly encourages all manner of alternatives to keep the testosterone levels within control.) Boys under 18 who are convicted of sodomy have their noses cut off (the same punishment for whores: these boys are seen as the woman in the relationship); for those over 18, the punishment for multiple offenders is the stake. And all of this is policed by a group of militant fundamentalist young men and boys in white robes, wielding sticks to make their point. In the end, Savonarola overreaches himself. He takes on the might of Rome through a direct challenge to the Pope and ends up on the pyres he had reserved for sinners.
And that is all I shall say about my novel. Oh - except for one thing. Its central character is a 14-year-old girl with a Renaissance education and a will of her own. And while I might not have had first-hand experience of the Taliban in my life, I do know a great deal about such girls because I have two of them living in my house at the moment (actually let's come clean: the education bit probably leaves a bit to be desired, but the will is certainly there). Last week, my elder daughter - the same age as my heroine - walked out of school to protest against her government's policies in the projected war against Iraq. She had asked my permission (protest has got politer since my day) and went and sat down at Downing Street, where after due warning she was forcibly removed by the police (well, maybe protest is not that much politer). She came home on fire with the experience: the way the press swooped in, the various conversations she and her mates had had with the policemen about war and protest, and the bruises she had to show on her forearm and legs from the moment of contact. But I think the thing that made the biggest impression on her was when she sat down to watch the news that night to see how their protest had been reported and heard the reporter describe the protesters' experience as "better than a double chemistry lesson". She was, needless to say, outraged by the idea that her nascent political opinions were simply to be dismissed as a creative form of truancy.
The reporter in question was the BBC's political editor and ex-editor of the Independent, the formidable Andrew Marr, with whom I happened to find myself in conversation this Monday on Start the Week (I was in my prostitute's role). When the programme was over (and yes, I was a coward not to refer to it before) I brought up the question of truancy and protest with him in the green room. He was gracious and unrepentant. He had interviewed some of the kids there and frankly it seemed to him as if they were just having a good time.
Anyway, as a result of the whole incident, my daughter remains volubly anti-war and now equally volubly suspicious of the media's reporting of it all. Meanwhile I, her mother, am too busy prostituting myself to have time to chain myself to any railings.
Beware the sound of bells and tapping heels. We are only trying to sell you something.
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