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Maureen Duffy: [00:00:00] And there was always a section which included sensationalist books about women, mainly written with sort of male titillation in mind, and we we used to get these and read them for fun, you know, but also partly it was an indication of how little there was and which was why I got so many letters from women, because they quite simply wasn’t anything. And there certainly wasn’t anything that the people that were known about were mainly rich, upper class women often living in Paris between the wars. I mean, that’s the kind of ambiance. Um, so that wasn’t much use to you if you were working on a petrol pump in Clapham or something, or even if you were being a teacher and having to keep it hidden. So that was why I think ‘The Microcosm’ appealed so much. And also hearing people’s voices, I think helped.

Maureen Duffy: [00:01:24] But as I say, I mean, there was very little, um, there’s a very good novel by Han Suyin, I don’t know whether you’ve ever come across it called ‘A Little Winter Love’ [Winter Love], but I didn’t know that. It is a very good book. It’s set during the Second World War. Never mentioned, sadly, uh, sort of challenged her later about it, because I got to know her later about whether it was based on actual experience, but didn’t get a straight answer.