It happens to most writers from time to time: books collide. When things you’ve been looking forward to – researching, planning, writing, promoting – end up competing for your time, it’s hard to hang on to the joy. I spent a few days researching at Le Mont St Michel in Normandy, conjuring up images of the 11th century, climbing the steep steps in the rain to the abbey to attend vespers with the nuns and monks of Les Fraternités de Jérusalem, and imagining what it might have been like to live there 1,000 years ago. I watched the perilous tide come rushing in as a steady stream of pilgrims attempted to make their way across the bay: the skull of St Aubert pierced by the Archangel Michael, an extraordinary scriptorial, the endless skies where Normandy and Brittany meet, wild winds and breath-taking sunsets, the golden light over the silver bay.
All I wanted to do when I got home was to sit at my desk, transcribe my notes, my plot ideas and dream. I wanted to remain in the 11th century and have time for the story to find me. But instead, I’m on a publication tour for my first YA/crossover non-fiction book, Feminist History for Every Day of the Year, a book that I loved writing and had been looking forward to promoting.
The problem is that the skills you need to bring a historical world vividly to life on the page are utterly different from those you need when speaking to students in a school hall or in a bookshop: one is about the interior life of an author, the other about the external requirements of being a performer. I love the out-and-about of publication, I love meeting readers, but at the same time I resent being pulled away from my imaginary friends. Then I pull myself together. The truth is that, at nearly 64, I’m grateful to be in this position of being pulled in several directions at once.
It’s stating the obvious to say that our ideas of ageing change with the passing of the years. Whatever age we are feels the centre of things, with the ripples of one’s earlier life and the life yet to come shimmering out from that central point. But when I was at school, the idea of being in my sixties was too remote to imagine, even though I come from a family of long-living women, and the idea that I might be writing for a living never crossed my mind. I think of all the women in the past who never had the chance to do half of what they wanted and feel grateful for being pulled in several directions at once.
All the opportunities women of my generation have been given come because of those who came before us, all the incredible women of the past who courageously fought for equality. So, time to put on the marching boots and get back on the road again. My desk and solitude will be waiting for me when I come home.
In season
Of all the seasons, autumn is my favourite, bringing with it a sense of new beginnings, a chance to start afresh. Our October garden is putting on a riotous display of colour, almost vulgar: the silver shimmer of the olive tree, the bronze-tipped leaves of the horse chestnut, the claret of the copper beech branches, a few last figs rotting purple on the bough, the pillar-box red of the crab apple tree, the waxy yellow quinces, and a riot of tomatoes. The National Association of Cider Makers says it has been a bumper year for apples too, producing fruit “full of rich flavours and natural sweetness”, thanks to a warm spring and the hottest summer in the UK on record. In the midst of all the dismal news, this is something to celebrate. Cheers!
All the difference
Finally, belated congratulations to everyone involved in the Netflix drama series Adolescence, which came away with six Emmys in September and saw 15-year-old Owen Cooper become the youngest-ever winner of the Best Supporting Actor award. In these times of techno-feudalism, when unprecedented power rests in the hands of a very few ageing, belligerent men driven by greed, bigotry, self-interest and hatred, the success of Adolescence is a timely reminder that the arts can, and do, make a difference. It is why, of course, tyrants seek to ban books, cut funding, and silence those who share a different vision of the world.
At the end of last month, news filtered out that the Taliban in Afghanistan – having stopped girls from going to school past the age of 11, and women from working outside the home – were removing all works written by women from libraries and destroying them. This is another reminder of why, now more than ever, we must support the poets, the writers, the actors, the filmmakers, the theatre directors, the composers, the peace-makers and the journalists, and make sure their – our – voices are heard.
“Feminist History for Every Day of the Year” by Kate Mosse is published by Pan Macmillan
endsexisminschools.org.uk
[Further reading: Thomas Pynchon’s lasting triumph]
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This article appears in the 16 Oct 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The Emperor