“... same label.’ The novel begins with much throat-clearing and attention-seeking, the sort of thing Fay Weldon said she learned from working in advertising – lots of sensational copylines designed to draw you in. ‘This is the story of a sexual trauma’; ‘She loomed up on him unclothed and unarmed, with her pincers of bliss’; ‘It was the opposite ...”

“... other names suggest themselves here too: Muriel Spark, Penelope Fitzgerald, Angela Carter, Fay Weldon.) She slowly assumed the status of national treasure, despite or maybe precisely because of the cannily maintained, resonantly low profile. There are forms of politesse and prevarication that can slot very well into a wider tactical ...”

“... that does well on late-night television and inspires agonised polemics in the Sunday supplements. Fay Godwin. Fay Weldon. All the Fays. There is concern at the Palace. Even the Cabinet war-council is cruising for some green relief, some planetary crisis to get them off the hook. Publishers have only to bring into focus ...”

“... and strange. In 1983, year of the Tories’ landslide victory, on the eve of the miners’ strike, Fay Weldon published Life and Loves of a She-Devil, with its huge and ugly heroine. The next year produced both Carter’s film The Company of Wolves, a horror story directed by Neil Jordan, in which the heroine turns into a wolf, and Nights at the ...”

“... An inexpert but frequently impressive first novel, Soor Hearts is set in Shetland in the early years of this century. Magnus Doull, having sailed before the mast for ten years, returns to the fishing village from which he had fled under suspicion of having murdered Thomas Pole. Nearly everyone believes him guilty, since the two young men had been seen to quarrel ...”

“... have been standing for PEACE and MR GORBACHEV with Gregory Peck and Yoko Ono and Gore Vidal and Fay Weldon. Where were you?!’ 26 September. And as I am correcting the proofs of this piece comes the death of my next-door neighbour, the publisher Colin Haycraft. He was like Lindsay A. in many ways, standing at the same ironic angle to the ...”

“... verve – one thinks of Angela Carter on writing fiction, Alison Hennegan on lesbian journalism, Fay Weldon interviewing herself – Ms Roberts’s piece stands out, and stands central. Honest, unflustered and incisive, it offers a feeling but unsentimental account of a feminist poet’s predicament, and the grounds of her alienation; and ...”

“... You have only to glance at the work of copyists and pale cousins like the vaguely mischievous Fay Weldon, the clodhopping misanthropic Barbara Vine, to understand that Spark’s use of that gorgeously ‘cemp’ posh-Scottish written voice of hers is really special. Not to mention a host of younger would-be poseuses and charmers who manage the ...”

“... for their critical reception. I did, however, take the precaution of inviting Paul Theroux and Fay Weldon to read mine, and, if they wished, to give me a quotation for the cover. Both agreed, and their comments were extremely helpful in persuading booksellers that here was a book they might risk having on their shelves. Robin Denniston of the Oxford ...”

“... panel”, (including Alistair Cooke, Jessica Mitford, Margaret Atwood, Paul Theroux, Fay Weldon, Harold Bloom, Susan Sontag, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, Dwight Bolinger, Elizabeth Traugott and many more). What is revealing is how the panel’s response to certain types of usage has changed between 1969, the date of the first ...”