42 Saturday December 18 2021 | the timesComment
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1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GFwallpapergate is so over. We’re all
about partygate these days. That
aside, he’ll be glad to know that the
style guide supports him. Of “-gate”
it says: “The use, serious or jocular,
of this tired Watergate-derived suffix
to designate any new scandal is lazy
and to be discouraged.”
It’s been a while since I’ve aired a
complaint on this subject, but last
time it surfaced the reader had come
up with a spectacular list of
offending examples. They’re nearly
all incomprehensible now but they
still make me laugh so I don’t mind
repeating them. The list went
spygate, liegate, Twittergate,
tyregate, fag-packet-gate, swivel-gate,
shouty spouse-gate, plebgate,
handgate, Henrygate and — this
dates it — Cheriegate.Short but sweet
W
hen I was clearing out my
mother’s house after her
death I found a notebook in
which she’d written at the top of the
first page: “Things to be grateful for.”
Sadly the resolution to count her
blessings soon seems to have lapsed,
because there was only one entry
and the rest of the page — in fact the
rest of the notebook — was blank.
Anyway, that single entry was one
with which I totally identify. It was
“People who make me laugh”. In that
spirit I’d like to thank everyone who
takes the trouble to send Feedback
their clever, constructive and witty
observations on the odd things they
find in the pages of The Times.
Happy Christmas, one and all.Sticking it out
W
e reported that in her Royal
Television Society lecture
Dame Esther Rantzen
described some of the everyday
misogyny she’d met in her early days
at the BBC. I don’t think any women
who were trying to make careers for
themselves in those days would have
found her account unfamiliar, but
still it was slightly surprising to read
in online comments how cross the
story made some of our readers. In a
typical post, reader Andrew Roberts
advised her that, given her successful
career, she “should stop whining on”.
One of Rantzen’s incidents
involved a boss who told her that he
preferred “working with people with
bits that stick out, and I don’t
understand people with holes”.
Charlotte Edwards commented:
“It’s interesting that ‘people with
holes’ was offensive back then, since
nowadays ‘vagina-havers’, ‘people
with uteruses’ and ‘people who
menstruate’ are all considered so
progressive and inclusive.”
Good point. Perhaps some of those
who want to remove women from
the vocabulary might like to think
harder about their preferred phrases.Gatecrashers
D
avid Simpson of Darby Green,
Hampshire, writes: “Please can
you stop writers putting ‘gate’
at the end of any scandal? The latest
is ‘wallpapergate’. It adds nothing to
the story and implies a lazy attitude.”
I’m sorry to break it to him butStuart, set out to teach people to
enjoy life and it was the antidote to
the all-prevailing cult of corruption.”
The main object of romantic
fiction, Miss Stuart continued, was a
desire to entertain and this was
nothing to apologise for. Romance
writers were not aiming to appeal to
intellectuals, and their readers
weren’t seeking to be educated. “I
feel that if by reading one of my
novels the young housewife will give
her rather dull husband a kiss
instead of putting arsenic in his tea,
then I shall have achieved
something”, she said.
In contrast to the spirit of the time,
the romantic novel had to be moral.
“It should not shock, inflame, or
create the impression that what was
morally wrong was acceptable and
commonplace.” By way of example,
she said one of her early books had
involved the love of a young girl for a
married man, and her publisher had
been anxious that if she must bring
the two together she should drown
the wife, rather than have a divorce.
Given that Miss Stuart’s talk was
delivered in the year that saw
publication of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell
Jar and Nell Dunn’s Up the Junction,
her confession that romantic fiction
sales were in decline comes as no
surprise. She blamed this partly on
the quality of some lesser books in
the genre, but also on the critics and
their “unfriendly attitude”. Plus ça
change. Still, romantic fiction has
always transcended critical fashion
and, having staged a strong recovery,
continues to flourish to this day.D
uring my past life as
fiction editor of Woman
magazine I was a regular
guest at meetings of the
Romantic Novelists’
Association. Its members were a
formidable bunch and I much
admired their militant defence of the
genre, not to mention their
phenomenal sales figures.
It probably says more about my life
than the state of literature that —
since those days — romance has
taken a back seat in my
consciousness. I’d assumed that as a
fictional category it had become a bit
of an anachronism, especially once
sex had been allowed to steam upDo not believe
those who say
romance is dead
the chaste pages of Mills & Boon. Far
from it, say the current leaders of the
association, who have delivered a
flea to our ears for “cancelling”
romance from our round-up of the
Best Books of the Year. In doing so
they are carrying on a battle that has
been waged since their foundation
more than 60 years ago. Back in
1963, when the book world was
celebrating the beat generation and
the kitchen sink, The Times
published an account of a speech by
the Romantic Novelists’ “chairman”
of the time, Miss Alex Stuart, to the
National Book League. The
association, she said, had some
trouble defining what the word
“romance” should mean. Her own
definition was that it was “a tale of
chivalry”. She poured scorn, our
article went on to report, “on those
who associated the romantic novel
with tales of ‘purple passion and
palpitating hearts’ written by mink
and diamond-bedecked elderly
women. Her type of novel, said MissRos e
Wild
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