On women

A reader writes: 'why are most of your blogs in one way or another about men?"

This came as a shock.

I've blogged about the artists Steph Knowles, Marlene Haring, Judith Rooze, Kate Hopkins, Rut Blees-Luxenburg, Miriam Elia and others. I've blogged about writers including Ruth Pitter, Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth David, Ann Quin, Dorothy Edwards and (several times) Eimear McBride; then there have been blogs about Fifty Shades of Gray, Alissa Nutting's horrible novel Tampa and the surprisingly extensive bibliography of the glamour model Katie Price. I've blogged about Thatcher (to mark her passing) and the former Culture Secretary Maria Something. I've blogged about performers (Bernadette Lafont and Anna Karina and Charlotte Rampling and Siobhan Redmond); about Susan Sontag (admiringly) and Kia Abdullah (disparagingly) and Virginia Woolf (several times, equivocally) and Ayn Rand (crushingly) and Lionel Shriver and Margaret Atwood and Christine Brooke-Rose and . . . . well, you get the picture. 

These are, admittedly vanishingly few in number compared with the pieces I've written about blokes. What to say in my defence? I am a bloke. Much of what I think and write is informed by, and is a response to, what other blokes have done and said and written. As such I am a product (or victim, if you prefer) of my background and education and the cultural allegiances which stem from that background and education. I like to think I aim higher than other blokes when it comes to the range and variety of my enthusiasms - you won't find much on this blog about sports or makes of cars. Or if not higher then at least in a different direction. To my enquiring reader I say: 'why don't you read other blogs?' I write what I can, about what I know.