Rudyard Kipling gets a girl power twist

 
p18 LOS ANGELES, CA - NOVEMBER 01: Writer Helen Fielding arrives at the 16th Annual BAFTA/LA Cunard Britannia Awards on November 1, 2007 at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty
Frazer Harrison/Getty
31 October 2012

There was standing room only last night at the Bush Theatre, Shepherd’s Bush, where novelist Helen Fielding and former Bond baddie Julian Glover and his wife, actress Isla Blair, recited poetry from “If: A Treasury of Poems for Almost Every Possibility”, edited by Allie Esiri and Rachel Kelly.

Fielding fondly recalled that her heroine Bridget Jones’s favourite poem is Rudyard Kipling’s “If”, after which the anthology is named. She now reads the poem to her two children. “My favourite books are self-help books”, she told the audience that included leader of the Tory rebels Jesse Norman MP and novelist Daisy Waugh. Fielding added her own flourish to Kipling’s famous ending (“And — what is more — you’ll be a Man, my son!”) ... “And — what is more — you’ll be a Woman, my daughter!”

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