Shirley Conran obit - trying to get a mortgage “lit the feminist fire in me”

[noraclavicle]

Those of a certain age will remember ‘Lace’ and the hype and furore around it. But Shirley Conran’s obit today is a fascinating read for many more reasons, not least her work on promoting financial independence and understanding for women and girls.

I didn’t know she’d created the Daily Mail’s ‘Femail’ section - how it turned out may not have been her vision for it perhaps. I remember print advertising for it in the mid-80s being a photo of a woman, hand covering mouth, slyly whispering into another, all-agog, woman’s ear and thinking ‘I’m not reading that!”

All that aside, a tough and determined woman.

Obit here (with share token)

Thank you for the share token. I remember reading Lace as a teenager. What a tough cookie she was.

Wow, that's a very impressive list of achievements. Loved Lace as a teenager.

Thanks for that. I re-read Lace recently and it very much holds up, but I'm glad to know about her many other achievements.

I remember her for Superwoman - containing the line 'life is too short to stuff a mushroom'.

Yes, that phrase stuck in my head!

What a legend, thank you for sharing.

I think that most posters are too you to remember 70s and 80s cuisine. There was a lots of mushroom and hard boiled egg stuffing going on.

TOO YOUNG

I’m sharing another link here - Shirley’s self-written biog, because it cuts out all the noise about her marriage that journalists overemphasise and focuses on everything she worked for:

My Zigzag Career

Thank you so much for both those links. What a woman.

What a great life. I'm pretty sure I've read Lace as a young adult but must give it a go again.
I also love that she championed the study of maths!

I didn’t realise she’d died. I loved Lace.

RIP Shirley.

She was wrong about mushoom-stuffing though, one of the quickest and easiest dinners.

@DeanElderberry depends how big the mushrooms, back when she was writing women stuffed button mushrooms as appetizers for cocktail parties for their husband's workmates. It was not a quick family lunch.

Preens, I have a signed copy of Superwoman!

I love the mushroom line!

Wow! How old is it?

Well someone gave it it to a woman called Pauline in 1976!

I read the Lace books when I way too young.

I've never been able to look at a goldfish since!

I seem to remember that was there was a funny story/cartoon at the back of the Superwoman book . . . .

A husband arrives home from work to find that the house is in a complete & utter mess, the toddlers are trying to murder each other, etc etc

The wife is sprawling on the sofa, reading a book and eating chocolates

As her husband enters the room she looks up and says "I thought the easiest way to show you what I do all day was NOT to do it!"

There was...

Let's see if I can get the text readable this time

Many thanks . . . It's strange because I don't think I've looked at that book for over 30 years, yet I could clearly remember that!!!!!

came here to say that.

We all read Lace at my boarding school. What's not to love about a book that has the opening line "which one of you bitches is my mother?" (IIRC)

I think I'm the least observant person in the world but it took me ages to realise that a character in the book (Kate?) was missing from the mini series!

Sc has just been discussed on Women's Hour.
Half a century old!
What strikes me is how we have slid from fussy food, thank goodness, to, as a society, simultaneously fetishising food (the Bake Off and Masterchelf programmes) and consuming mostly rubbish processed food.