Kashmiri Bhatta

Online Chat

Fay Weldon

Weldon was born Franklin Birkinshaw in Birmingham, England, in 1931, to a literary family. Her maternal grandfather, Edgar Jepson (1863–1938), her uncle Selwyn Jepson and her mother Margaret Jepson wrote novels (the latter sometimes under the nom de plume Pearl Bellairs, from the name of a character in Aldous Huxley's short story "Farcical History of Richard Greenow").

Weldon grew up in Christchurch, New Zealand, where her father, Frank Thornton Birkinshaw, worked as a doctor. In 1936, when she was five, her parents agreed to separate, later divorcing (1940). She and her sister Jane spent the summers with her father, first in Coromandel, later in Auckland. She attended Christchurch Girls' High School for two years from 1944. Weldon has described herself as a "plump, cheerful child", stating in a blog post that began as an unpublished article for the Daily Mail: "I was born large, blonde and big-boned into a family of small beautiful women. My mother thought it was unlikely that anyone would marry me, and therefore I would have to pass exams, earn my own living and make my own way in the world. Or that’s what I thought she thought." She goes on to explain how this view of herself affected her later writing career. "I’d be happier to have been seen as a skinny, feisty child, a slim and serious adult, and a handsome octogenarian with an interesting literary past. But that was not to be, despite a lifetime of diets. It was however a state of affairs which made me write a good few novels with overweight, plain women as their heroines. I’ve always been on their side – they are the unseen majority."

In September 1946, when she was 15, she returned to England with her mother and sister. She recalls: "I was a literary groupie from the antipodes...Not that I had any intention of being a writer at the time – too much like hard work. All I wanted was to get married and have babies." She did not see her father again before his death in 1949.

In England Weldon won a scholarship to the all-girls South Hampstead High School, before going on to study psychology and economics at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. Later she recalled attending classes with the moral philosopher Malcolm Knox, who "spoke exclusively to the male students, maintaining that women were incapable of moral judgement or objectivity." She completed her MA in 1952 and moved to London, where she worked as a clerk at the Foreign Office for a salary of six pounds a week.

Early career

Weldon had temporary jobs as a waitress and hospital ward orderly before working as a clerk for the Foreign Office where she wrote pamphlets to be dropped in Eastern Europe as part of the Cold War. She had to leave this job after she became pregnant. Later she took a job with Crawford's Advertising Agency, where she worked with the writer Elizabeth Smart, and where she could earn enough to support herself and her young son (Nicolas).

As head of copywriting at Ogilvy, Benson & Mather, she was responsible for publicising (but not originating) the phrase "Go to work on an egg". She coined the slogan "Vodka gets you drunker quicker," saying in a Guardian interview: "It just seemed ... to be obvious that people who wanted to get drunk fast needed to know this." Her bosses disagreed and suppressed it.

Personal life

In 1953, while working at the Foreign Office, Weldon became pregnant by musician Colyn Davies whom she met when he was moonlighting as a doorman. She has said that while she wanted the child (son Nicolas), she decided she did not want the father. In 1957, tired of struggling to support herself as a single mother, she married Ronald Bateman, a headmaster 25 years her senior.They lived together in Acton, London, for two years, until the marriage ended.

In 1961, aged 29, Weldon met her second husband, Ron Weldon, a jazz musician and antiques dealer. They married in 1963 when Fay was pregnant with her second son Dan (born that same year). They lived in East Compton, Somerset, later having two more sons, Tom (1970) and Sam (1977). It was while she was pregnant with Dan that Weldon began writing for radio and television. The couple visited therapists regularly and in 1992 Ron left Fay for his astrological therapist, who had told him that the couple's astrological signs were incompatible.They began divorce proceedings, although Ron died in 1994, just eight hours before the divorce was finalised.

In 1994 Weldon married Nick Fox, a poet who was also her manager, but instigated divorce proceedings in 2020.

In 2000 Weldon became a member of the Church of England and was confirmed in St Paul's Cathedral. She states that she likes to think that she was "converted by St Paul".

Controversies

In a 1998 interview for the Radio Times, Weldon stated that rape "isn't the worst thing that can happen to a woman if you're safe, alive and unmarked after the event."[26] She was roundly condemned by feminists for this assertion.

In 2000, Weldon's novel The Bulgari Connection became notorious for its product placement, naming the jewellers not only in the title but another 34 times, while a minimum of 12 times was stipulated in the £18,000 contract.

Weldon has defended the so-called "Snowflake Generation", saying: "We should stop being beastly to the snowflakes.... Today’s young grow up into a violent, angry, unstable environment, all too likely to end up jobless, homeless and childless, unlikely to reach their full potential. They are probably the most despairing generation ever conceived. The least we can do is not add to their burden by slagging them off."

Courtesy--wikipedia

- Fay Weldon

Online Chat

© 2021 - All Rights Reserved