To be a Woman: The Life of Jill Craigie with Carl Rollyson

Writing and directing a film about Plymouth after World War II led to Jill Craigie’s marrying Michael Foot, a major figure in 20th-century British politics. Craigie’s biographer Carl Rollyson tells the illuminating story of a first lady of the back bench. “She was a William Morris socialist. And what I mean by that is socialism wasn't just abstract ideas. You know, people should be equal or there should be, you know, free public health or things. She was a William Moore socialist, which meant you had to try to make every day beautiful. The plates you ate on, the clothes you wore, the house you lived in, anything you could do on a daily basis was part of her socialism.” He discusses the consequences of Jill’s being raped by the writer Arthur Koestler, a friend of Foot’s and a literary “great man,” which was kept secret for decades.


Carl Rollyson is a prolific biographer as well as a critic who writes and podcasts extensively about the art of biography. He is writing a book about presidential biographers that I am very much looking forward to, and we’ll be doing another podcast about his biographies of Sylvia Plath (not a favorite of mine, so I’m eager to hear why he keeps coming back to her).


To be a Woman is available as an ebook (https://www.amazon.com/Be-Woman-Life-...) , in paperback (https://www.amazon.com/Be-Woman-Life-...) , and as an audiobook (https://www.amazon.com/Be-Woman-Life-...) read by Helen Lloyd.


Carl and I spoke about Jill Craigie and women’s biographyon Carl’s podcast, too. You can listen here (https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show...) .


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