The author talks about celebrities writing children's books, putting a character in drag and why her publishers wouldn't have encouraged her to come out 20 years ago
and the Spice Girls, though thanks to her prolific output of over a hundred books – “It could be 117 or 118, I’d have to check” – they are at the heart of childhood reading for the generations who came after me, too. At least, that’s judging by the number of mini-Hetty Feathers scampering about on World Book Day, and the Gen Z women posting videos of their lovingly dog-eared collections of her books on TikTok .
Wilson, who was made a dame in 2008 and has sold about £40m copies in the UK alone, quite simply transformed children’s books. Pushing back against the cosy, middle-class upbringings that once dominated children’s fiction, her stories more than any others evoke the loneliness and hostility of the playground, and spotlight children who are outsiders in some way – whose early lives have been blighted by divorce, homelessness, abandonment, mental illness or grief.
“There is a lot that is weird about modern times, but we should congratulate ourselves in that we’re much more accepting of people who are gloriously different in all sorts of ways,” she continues, as our conversation turns to 2020’sAhead of its publication, Wilson “came out” to the press – anyone who knew her in real life was perfectly aware she had spent much of the previous two decades in a relationship with Trish, a former bookseller, with whom she lives in the Sussex village of Alfriston.
Biddy was the only person in Wilson’s life who reacted negatively to her relationship with Trish. “She was very naughty, because she was never homophobic, but because it was me, it was, ‘Oh, shame! Oh, what will people think?’”
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