Times Interview with Kate Clanchy - shared article in post

[NorthSouthEast]

This is a sobering, thoughtful, harrowing, blood-boiling read. What Kate Clanchy went through 😡. I’ve put this in FWR as it’s yet another story of a woman being cancelled on the basis of rumour, supposition and hearsay with self-righteous people scrambling to jump on the “be kind” wagon as it rolls another human being and their career into the mud.

Kate Clanchy: I was cancelled. It made me contemplate suicide

www.thetimes.com/article/7681d5ec-3773-4b36-ab95-e4ab409d7899?shareToken=e76def471fd13ded750d7295fd554675

Your post was this:

lamamo · 07/11/2025 14:33
are you Kate Clanchy? Or? From that article it looks like she's not averse to hiring people to bring down her "enemies".
I’m very sorry for whatever situation has led you to feeling like this but your attacks on Kate are vicious and unfounded.
Dear God, get a life. Unless you're Kate I can't see how anyone else would be invested enough to write this.

It is not ‘exactly like’ mine at all. I called out the PP who got so overwrought about KC that she started drawing parallels between her and Jimmy Saville and Nazis. I called that out.

But from being in the industry and seeing this go on, Kate was awful and the criticism of her was wholly justified.

Can you specify exactly why you think Kate is awful and that the criticism of her (included above in @XXRepealtheGRA s extremely enlightening post)?

Was it the KKK accusations you agreed with? Are you saying that you genuinely think this author who spent 30 years working with refugee children is racist? Or is your criticism of her as ridiculous and unjustified as your criticism of me? You’ve rather undermined yourself there.

Why do you think I should ‘get a life’ and how does that equate to anything I said to Deanelderberry?

I don't expect you'll get any answers to your questions @BundleBoogie. I'm still waiting for answers to mine from a couple of days ago.

I think the short answer to all of them is "She's a witch. Burn her."

I've just started listening to the radio programme. She was immensely successful as a poet before all this happened, so the idea that she was 'using' the children's work to "peddle herself" (as@DeanElderberrysuggested) is absurd. Her memoir was about sharing what she'd learnt over 30+ years as a teacher.

This is a thread from 2019 about a similar cancellation. Some people just seem determined to destroy the lives and careers of others.

"Cast Off - Diversity wars are raging in the knitting world' | Mumsnet

Poetry - they fight so hard because the stakes are so low.

It's the viciousness of the attacks that take you aback. It's not just the fact that these women were critical of Clanchy, Lamb, Bindel etc, but that they used language like "cunts". Hadley Freeman today links to a screenshot of one of Monisha Rajesh's tweets:

https://x.com/HadleyFreeman/status/1987446856704815215

It's insane. It's such a disproportionate response to the seeming provocation - in this case, a newspaper publishing an interview with Kate Clanchy. No one normal talks like this. The idea that people post offensive, inflammatory comments like this, which can be read by millions of people, suggest to my mind that they are not quite of sound mind.

For those who don't know Christina Lamb, she wrote a superb book on rape as a weapon of war, Our Bodies, Their Battlefield. I can't imagine what she is supposed to have done to provoke these people's anger.

Don't know if this has been posted already, apologies if so. Kate has written an article in Unherd

https://archive.ph/fHRue

https://unherd.com/2025/11/uncancelled-at-last/

I admit I haven't read the book, and probably never will, but is 'compulsorary' actually a word? This is the caliber of person they have critiquing other people's work?

I agree with a comment I just saw on X, which was that the three women who seem to be at the centre of many of the 'cancellations' over the past few years appear to have some serious emotional regulation issues. Potentially disordered.

I don't want to see them hounded, or abused, or 'cancelled', either.

The problem, I would say, is with publishers and organisations like the 'Society of Authors', who have enabled, supported and facilitated abuse.

Good article.

It's very possible cancellation may eventually help produce exceptional work.

Thanks for posting the archive link to the Unherd article, @icakethereforeIam

Sadly, "compulsorary" is not a word, and this short extract thereby exposes the problem, or one of the problems: that some of the people allowed to exert power over the fate of the book are not, in fact, capable of understanding said book.

I'm nowhere near the centre of this saga, but as a fringe person in publishing I've been following it since it erupted in 2021. There seems to be a never-ending cycle of questions, all unanswerable: (a) Who started it? (b) Is Kate nice or nasty? (c) Are the three women nice or nasty? (d) Was a particular reader offended by the book? (e) Who gets to be a "sensitivity reader"? (f) If someone receives racist abuse from an unidentifiable stranger on the internet, who is responsible? (g) Does it count as being cancelled if everyone is still talking about you?

To my ears now, these questions are as chaff in the wind. The enduringly horrifying thing about this episode is that Pan Macmillan did not stand by the book they had published. Even worse, the publishing staff who caved to the book's critics did so without having read the book first. This part is so disgraceful that it's uttered in a whisper whenever it comes up in conversation, it's that bad.

[NB: My understanding is that the original editor that Kate Clanchy worked with at Pan Macmillan had indeed read the book thoroughly, as would be expected. However, for some reason, he was not at the front line of the response when things erupted in 2021.]

When you think back to the 1980s, when Salman Rushdie had the fatwa on him, the entire publishing industry joined hands to defend him, and were proud to do so. And now, fast-forward to 2021, a publisher gets some criticism on twitter, and just.... keels over? Everyone was aghast. That's why it's still a case study for the publishing industry four years later, and that's why it's bigger than the feelings of any of the individuals who were involved.

Whatever your thoughts about the 2021 debacle, whatever conversations you're having on BlueSky/Threads/X/ WhatsApp, the central question everyone should be grappling with is: should publishers stand by their books? In my opinion, this would be a better place for conversations to start, rather than trying to go back to 2021 to work out who said what on Goodreads.

Thanks for this. I've not been particularly invested in this story and was only vaguely aware of it going on. (So many cancelled women). Its been eye opening.

Sadly, I suspect petty jealousy is the driver for some of the, frankly, unhinged attacks on this woman. Agree to disagree on tone of her writing if you must, be envious of her class privilege, if you must (she's attractive and stylish too. I'm sure that's read uncharitably by her detractors) but let's not pretend she, or any writer, deserves to be pulled over the coals in this fashion.

Kate's article in Unherd is so beautifully written. I love what she says about the word "small":

'Besides, “small” is one of the glories of the English language, a word for “little” that we use for knobbly, close, personal things, a word infused with the tenderness we feel for pets and children but which can never be confused with lesser, or petty, a word that never carries scorn. Not to understand that — or to have put up barriers in the mind so you cannot hear it — seems so sad.'

It's obvious, ironically, that the one quality "sensitivity" readers lack is sensitivity. They are apparently completely tin-eared, closed to the nuances of words or meanings.

The mystifying thing in all this, as others have observed, is why the publishers take any notice of these people. How can you take seriously a supposed sensitivity reader who uses "compulsorary" - a non-existent word? Why, when faced with vicious attacks on one of your star authors by people who are, apparently, deranged, do you not mount a robust defence of the star author? Why cave into people who readily reach for the most vile slurs, such as "cunts", rather than stand up for an author you should be proud of, someone who has both won the Orwell prize and whose book is a best-seller?

The whole business reflects very badly indeed on the publishing industry and the people who work in it.

c) Are the three women nice or nasty

I can’t imagine any scenario in which those three women, Monisha Rajesh, Sunny Singh and Chimene Suleyman, could be described as nice. Their hounding of Kate Clanchy and others has been truly shocking. As a pp has said, jealousy may be a driver.

I don't want to see them hounded, or abused, or 'cancelled', either.

Maybe not, but I think they should face some consequences for the awful things they said.

ISTR recent years have seen some shit and unforgivably cowardly responses wrt Salman Rushdie's experiences, also.

I think in situations like this, people create their own consequences, tbh.

I've always thought (always being relatively recent) that sensitivity readers are in a bit of a bind. They're getting paid to do this job so I imagine they're under pressure to have something, anything to show for it. If, despite their sensitivity, someone does find something to get offended by and gets some traction then they've failed. They may never work in that field again. Whose feelings are they protecting? What's the baseline? It used to be it was the everyman on the Clapham omnibus. I don't think that's the case anymore.

Christina Lamb explains what she did in this article.

Nothing could prepare me for the online war: Christina Lamb on being attacked by the trolls

Nothing could prepare me for the online war: Christina Lamb on being attacked by the trolls

Second link is to the archive version.

Thank you for that link. Christina has been relentless in exposing the violations of women in war zones. Given the unhinged and abusive language used by her detractors it's unbelievable that they reserve the right to use abusive language while criticising the use of a quotation that Christina has apologised for using.

Wow, that attack on Christina Lamb quite something, isn't it? These people just enjoy making other people's lives a misery. It's malice, pure and simple.

I read the book. In it, Kate Clanchy is just generally mean and unkind about loads of kids’ appearances. The overall tone is just a bit icky.

If she had ever once apologised for causing offence, however unintended, and then stopped engaging, this all would have stopped. She did so much to fan the flames, and kicked off the row to begin with.

her publisher seems to have behaved appallingly spinelessly but from the internal emails it seems they were frustrated she refused to follow their advice about how to handle this so were often on the back foot.

The three women who led the campaign against her must regret this now and when you see the tweets resurface the tone & language used is just shocking and so unprofessional. This will follow them for the rest of their lives.

I also thought it was interesting that even the sensitivity reader they interviewed on the podcast thought that a post-publication sensitivity read was pointless and actually recommended they add a new introduction instead.

I read the book. In it, Kate Clanchy is just generally mean and unkind about loads of kids’ appearances. The overall tone is just a bit icky.

Why did the publishers publish it then? Why aren't they taking responsibility for their actions?

Anyone can write a book about anything, there are no rules. But the publishers are the ones who take the decision to unleash it onto the world.

Neither Christina Lamb not Kate Clanchy deserved horrific online abuse and threats to their career. But both used descriptive phrases (even if CL was alluding to Prince Phillips gaffs she said 'we rather enjoy them, and used the 'slitty eyes' gaff as the direct illustration') that were pretty problematic. It's interesting that CL apologised quickly and copiously, it seems, though I missed the furore at the time. I wonder, if KL had engaged with her critics and done the same, if it would have changed anything. I think it was the right thing to do anyway. But I suspect an apology would have done very little to ease the hostility. Of course there is zero context in any of it. It should be possible to consider KC's thirty years of working with under privileged kids and nurturing extraordinary creativity, without saying it negates the questionable descriptive terms, but concluding, contextually, that her work with those kids is extraordinary. But there is no nuance of course. The social and psychological mechanics of purity spirals are pretty terrifying. And so much of it seems to come down on pre established tribalism lines which seem an awful lot to do with Israel vs Palestine and the gender wars (which also seem to line up tribally quite a bit which I am a bit surprised by) What has happened to Rachel Rooney, an autistic poet of great talent, is also deeply upsetting - also because she has done absolutely nothing wrong and written nothing of controversy, but her book My Body is Me is a transgression against the Divine Book of Transgender Ideology and therefore she must be burned. The misogyny and hypocrisy (and subsequent lack of interest in it) for her, and the way her career has been destroyed, is appalling. What really gets me though, is how men see women. White men try to appear to hate brown/black women less than white women, because that would be racist, which, finally, after far too long, is seen as a Very Bad Thing, whereas misogyny is still pretty meh. So when white men get a chance to jump on a bandwagon at a white woman - my god the outlet. This is also a large part of the energy behind the gender debate wars imo. Anyway, my two pence worth.

I mean, publishers are just people. The book had plenty of redeeming qualities, it was engaging and entertaining.

Adam Kay’s professional memoir had been a massive bestseller just before Kate’s was published and in that book he is humorously rude about his patients. I wonder if it’s a feature of that genre of book.

I just don't get why all the ire has been for Clanchy. Someone else took the decision to publish it and therefore their responsibility is much greater.