This weekend I read an interview that Hilary Mantel gave to Italian publication la Repubblica in which she gave honest answers to some really quite direct questions. She answered a question posed to her about where she stood on the hounding JK Rowling has received on Twitter. What she said was this: “I don’t think you will find many writers who favour the self-righteous stifling, fear-ridden climate of cancel culture.”
Not a writer with a heart, I would agree.
I was on holiday a few weeks ago when the Kate Clanchy debate hit Twitter, and it was a very ugly thing to witness. Clanchy is the author of several books and one among them is Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me. Clanchy had described her students in terms of their physicality: ‘chocolate brown skin’ ’almond eyes’ ‘small and square and Afghan with his big nose’. I think we can agree, without doubt, that these descriptions are reductive, unnecessary, lazy and, yes I can see, also racist.
Here, I must confess to a veste…