THE LANDSCAPE OF MARRIAGE

A most enjoyable read is Katherine Whitehorn's autobiography "Selective Memory" published by Virago, 2007. (Full details on Amazon here.)

She talks about her life as a journalist and the world of British magazines, newspapers and books. The period is the late 50s and onwards. She currently writes as an Agony Aunt in Saga magazine.

Her husband of 45 years, the author Gavin Lyall, died in 2003. She states:

"Losing your husband has two separate aspects: there's missing the actual man, your lover; his quirks, his kindness, his thinking. But marriage is also the water in which you swim, the land you live in: the habits, the assumptions you share about the future, about what's funny or deplorable, about the way the house is run – or should be; what Anthony Burgess called a whole civilisation, a culture, 'a shared language of grunt and touch'. You don't 'get over' the man, though you do after a year or two get over the death; but you have to learn to live in another country in which you're an unwilling refugee." [p. 263].


There is an interview on BBC Woman's Hour here.

She is going to be at the Mitchell Library in March for the Aye Write Book Festival.

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Photo: Arran by C. Reeves