What do you think about Mary Wesley?

Can you imagine a woman of seventy-one being described in the press as a ‘promising new talent’?

Can you believe that between the ages of seventy and ninety a woman could have ten bestsellers published?

Can you believe that a woman of this age would write about such taboo subjects as incest, matricide, suicide, prostitution and sex?

English writer Mary Wesley did. And she also worked in intelligence for MI5 during the war, had three children by three different men, and began a love affair with Robert Bolt at sixty-nine.

I just love some of her sayings.

‘A lot of people stop short. They don’t actually die but they say, ‘Right, I’m old, and I’m off to retire,’ and then they dwindle into nothing. They go to Florida and become jolly boring.’

‘I have no patience with people who grow old at sixty just because they are entitled to a bus pass. Sixty should be the time to start something new, not put your feet up.’

‘Of course risk-taking does not always pay off, but it’s a lot of fun.’

‘ We’re all like children. We may think we grow up but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning.’

What do you think?