I was born in 1908, of course, so in 1910 I was only two, and in 1920 I was only twelve, but I do remember what the fashions were like. I remember my mother saying, “When we look back at the photographs that are being taken, we shall think we went mad.” So, the fashions seemed extreme even to a middle-class suburban woman like my mother. I wonder if my older sister was a flapper girl. You see, to be a flapper meant you were brazen. It meant you went out and displayed yourself in a way that I don’t think women had displayed themselves before that.

  The flappers didn’t affect me because, of course, I was only ten. But they wore incredibly short skirts. Punch was full of jokes about some racy young girl shocking her uncle by saying things that now seem perfectly normal, but which back then seemed so shocking. There seemed to be a resurgence in the importance and the worship of youth that had hitherto been absent. You see, in 1910, the world was ruled by middle-aged people. But by 1920 it was ruled by young people, much as it is today.

  There was a great change in art as well. In 1926, the Surrealists had an exhibition in England. Of course, by that time surrealism had existed in France for years. But it hadn’t existed in England and everybody had to try and adapt themselves to this confusing idea that pictures were not representations of nature; they were something else. And I should think that Ms. Stein’s[11] writing began in the Twenties. I can’t remember when precisely she flourished, but I have a feeling it would have been in the Twenties. During that time, all Americans went to Paris. Anita Loos[12] said Paris is where good Americans go when they die. And back then, Parisians loved Americans. Now it’s very different. America’s subsequent domination of international affairs and France’s own waning influence has meant that the average Frenchman now loathes Americans, which is a great shame.

  Women stopped being ‘ladies’ after the First World War, though for a while society held them to its previous standards. Consequently, if you wore a short skirt and danced the Charleston, people would judge you and say you were going to hell. Part of being a lady, in the traditional sense, is to be discreet and modest, and women of the 1920s lost both of those qualities.

  In 1926, skirts were so short that they were above the knee. Prior to that, I don’t think anyone had ever seen a woman’s knee. Perhaps they thought they didn’t even have them. The discovery was certainly shocking. There were, of course, endless comments about it in magazines. About women wearing makeup, and whether or not it was acceptable for them to be seen applying it in public. It was as if it was acceptable so long as people didn’t see the act of application. That way, a woman’s look could be thought of as either natural, which is absurd, or else one that didn’t involve effort, which is just naïve.

  Of course, it was men who wrote the magazines back then as well, so the articles were obviously one-sided. Men were feeling lost, absent of a female class that they could respect. It must have been quite difficult. With conversations about sex taking place in ordinary society, how far could a man go in talking about sex? Previously, two of the greatest taboos of English society were sex and money, and up until then a gentleman knew that neither topic was a subject for public conversation.

  Men continued to dress in the same way as previously and this, of course, meant that women complained that men wore boring clothes and that every man was a clone. They were to an extent. They all wore clothes that were all exactly alike: double-breasted suits and wide trousers. Trousers that covered your feet and went as far forward as your toes. They were called spats. My father wore spats - I suppose because everyone else did. The general logic was that they either kept you warm or else kept your socks clean. I don’t know. And almost all men wore hats when they went to work.

  Of course, I never wore a hat. I remember someone saying to me once, “Oh, you’re part of the hatless brigade.” It was not meant as a compliment. Back then it had never occurred to me to wear a hat. These days people don’t even recognize me without one. My attitude these days is one of practicality, however. I wear a hat principally so that my head won’t be cold and my hair won’t be ruffled.

  Back then men wore hats with no hair visible south of the hat’s brim. The back of a man’s head had to be trimmed. I remember visiting the barber with my mother and receiving the haircut that was assigned to me. I could feel the clippers going “Bbllrrr! Bbllrrr! Bbllrrr!” It must have been thought untidy or even dirty to have a lot of hair hanging about. Long hair on a man would have been considered disheveled.

  I longed to have long hair. I remember when I was twenty, after I had left home to live on my own, visiting a barber in High Wycombe and saying, “Could I have hair like Jesus Christ?” And the barber said, “I have never had the privilege of cutting that gentleman’s hair.” Which was both a marvelous response and also a way of telling me that I was making a grave error in judgement.

  Although Queen Victoria died in 1901, she sort of laid the groundwork for the change that permeated womanhood in the 1920s. She was a kind of trendsetter for fashion. She introduced all sorts of things that previously had been considered vulgar. She wore rings on all her fingers, including her thumbs. Everyone behaved very well in her presence and everyone longed to be like her.

  Another change that took place during that decade concerned women’s role during sex. In England, before the 1920s, sex was considered a burden that women had to bear, rather than a pleasure. I get the feeling that for many women it still is. And back then the only reason for sex was to produce heirs and offspring. But, of course, no one ever mentioned it. Even these days we only hear about the bold people. The wild people. The actresses. I’m sure most people’s sex lives are still dull and full of duty. So, perhaps things have not really changed all that much.

  I hate to think what my parents’ sex life was like. If it mirrored their marriage it would have been cold and stale. Of course, one’s principal reference point for marriage is one’s parents. Theirs is the relationship to which we are most exposed when we are young and impressionable. In my case, my mother and father hated one another, though they never raised their voices in front of us. It didn’t deceive me, or anyone else, into thinking they were happy, but I think that was meant to be the idea. Anyway, I knew that marriage was no good from an early age.

  Even so, my brothers and sister got married, and they were just as much exposed to my parents as I was. My sister in particular must have had an odd view of marriage. After five years she went to a doctor and asked why she was not yet pregnant, to which he replied, “Because you are still a virgin.” So goodness knows what, if anything, they had been doing. How she didn’t know what sex was, let alone how a woman actually becomes pregnant, I have no idea. But it definitely wasn’t part of the school curriculum back then and she did, of course, marry a clergyman.

  He should have known what was going on, of course. The bible is full of sex and rape. I can only assume she didn’t consult with him before visiting the doctor, because surely he would have set her straight. Anyway, things must have changed because she did get pregnant in the end, and she ended up giving birth to a daughter. That must have been an awkward conversation however. Either he wasn’t physically interested in her or he was just as naïve as she was. I find that hard to believe though. Anyway, they ended up having just the one child, so either they went back to doing whatever it was they did before, or else one or both of them decided it wasn’t worth all the effort or embarrassment.

  My sister must have had a strange life - not that she ever discussed it with me or, I think, anybody. But she did tell one of her nieces the story of her being a virgin after five years of marriage. Otherwise we would never have known, because I never would have thought about it or questioned it.

  Although the awakening of female youth that occurred in the 1920s calmed down a little in the immediate decades that followed, the changes that it ushered in have remained more or less to the present day. These days, women have abandoned being ladies. Most have abandoned being women, which is a pity. They have instead decided to be people, which is a terrible thing because that’s settling downward. Equality is all very well, but that doesn’t mean that men and women have to behave the same as each other.

  Back then, women were nicer than people. Now they go to work, which I suppose they have to now that everything is so expensive. If you have a house and two children these days, your husband’s wages are not enough, which is very sad. Likewise, men can no longer be gentlemen because their role and earnings potential seem to have changed. And while I can see that being a lady or a gentleman is now outdated and unreasonable, I do miss it. Chiefly I miss ladies, because they were such spectacularly feminine creatures. Of course, gentlemen were only gentlemen in public. They were rats when no one was looking. But both are now extinct. Fatalities of modern living.

  The 1920s was also the decade that brought Walt Disney to the world, with his now famous mouse first appearing in 1928. I remember seeing the original Disney cartoons, which were short films lasting about eight minutes, part of a program that included a double-feature and had various shorts as well.

  In those days, a trip to the cinema was really wonderful because you were in the dark for about three and a half hours. You saw two films, a main feature and a B-feature, which lasted about an hour, then you had a travelogue, which was boring, but then you saw a lacquer cartoon which was usually one of Mr. Disney’s.

  I remember the first time I saw Mickey Mouse, and I instantly liked him. He was better than Felix the Cat, the star of another cartoon series, because he was so much livelier. So, I loved Mickey Mouse and all of his friends, but people criticized him. Well, not so much him but his creators and producers. They thought his cartoons were too violent. I didn’t mind the violence. I liked the movement and the comedy. I thought they were wonderful films. Unfortunately, now, ‘Disney’ has become a term that has come to mean a sentimentalization of serious subjects, which is a pity. People use the phrase ‘disneyfied’ to mean something which has had all the bite taken out of it, something that has been made sweet and charming and bland and innocent.

  Times Square is one of the places that they claim has been disneyfied. Times Square used to be such a wonderful place. I remember saying to a friend of mine when the peepshow houses were shut down, “If you can’t go to hell in your own way, what good is life?” To which he replied, “Yes! And if you can’t go to Hell in your own way in New York, where can you?”

  After his original shorts Mr. Disney went on to make feature-length cartoon films, the first of which I saw was Snow White. I think I saw most of them, in fact. As a designer by trade, I could see the artistry in what he did. I remember seeing a documentary about him, in which he took you inside his film studios and showed you the making of a cartoon film. That was marvelous. When he had a unit in England, I tried to be part of it but they wouldn’t have me. And I remember coming home from an interview there, broken and disillusioned. But that was back when I was trying to be a designer, when I thought I had to work to earn a living - long before I learned you could come to America and do fame instead.

  An interviewer once asked me if I’d thought about having a Disney cartoon based on me. I don’t know why they asked me that. I mean, I would love it, but what could he show me doing or being? I don’t think you could have a story about me that was clean enough to appeal to Mr. Disney’s fans. Of course, all the great film stars were at one time or another characters in one of his films. Ms. Hepburn[13] even played Bo Peep in one of them. I would have liked to voice a character in one of Mr. Disney’s films. That would have made me immortal.

  7. The RELIGIOUS RIGHT

  The Religious Right is the biggest mistake I can think of, but I don’t think you can alter people’s religious views without creating a lot of trouble. This is because, generally, people don’t want their religion tampered or interfered with. I don’t know where they got their views from, but I think it may have been from St. Paul, who was the public relations officer of the whole ‘sin movement’. Christ, of course, said almost nothing about sin or sex, except that if you looked at a woman with desire you had already committed adultery.

  St. Paul on the other hand had very definite views about sin. He said it was better to marry than to burn. Which is not a hearty recommendation for the state of matrimony, but does give you the impression that he thought casual sex was wrong. I think that is the stumbling block most people have with the Religious Right. They don’t want people to be happy, except in a conventional married setting. And that has to change, but I don’t know how.

  The Religious Right, like most other religious people, have the view that everyone has to think the same way. Generally, I think that’s a view that all people have. We all think we are right, that we know best and that we have it all figured out. Conversely, if you do not have the same moral system as someone else, you’re wrong in their eyes and will have to change your mind.

  Nonbelievers have a looser view. I have never known a nonbeliever who was angry about the people who did believe. Not solely on the basis of their belief, anyway. It’s the believers who are angry with people who don’t believe, so there’s something wrong with the believers. It’s insecurity of the highest order.

  Yet, though I can identify that as the chief problem, I don’t think we can alter it in our own lifetime. I don’t think it’s part of human nature to accept that other people have a different belief and they must be allowed to maintain it. We all want to be right and, when confronted with someone who thinks otherwise, we take it as an affront or a challenge to our own beliefs.

  In truth, there never can be a total divorce between church and state, even though it is written into the U.S. Constitution. This is because whatever people do has a moral value, whether it is a political act or a personal act or an attitude. And if you can bring the moral value into it, then it becomes a religious question. So it’s unrealistic to think you can divorce church from state. You can, of course, divorce them inasmuch as you can avoid invoking a formal religion, but religion will always find its way into politics, not least because it’s the puritans and missionaries who tend to stand for office.

  Everything has a moral value, but in truth morality is expediency in a long white dress. When Moses said to the Jews, “Thou shalt not kill,” what he wanted to preserve was their number. When he took the Jews out of Egypt, they weren’t fighters. They were waiters and actors. They were anybody. And he was taking them across extremely hostile terrain, a long journey over the desert. Yet, round the other side of every sand dune was a band of desert fighters: the Malachites and the Hittites for example. And the only weapon that the Israelites had was their number. If they were seen to be a huge band of people, no one would attack them. So, Moses realized that, if they fought among themselves, they would lose as a band of people. He knew you can’t carry a wounded man through the desert; you would have to leave him behind.

  So, the rules he ‘received’ were convenient to his predicament. You mustn’t kill people. You mustn’t steal from people because that leads to trouble. You mustn’t insult your parents because that causes ill-feeling. He wanted it all to be kept smooth so that the Israelites’ numbers would never decrease. So, when he came down from the mountain[14], he knew he couldn’t say, “I have decided thou shalt not kill” because that would lead to them saying, “And who are you?” So, he adopted the American solution, he said, “My agent says thou shall not kill.” And his agent was God. And that’s how he got away with it.

  One of the odd things about the Religious Right is, of course, their affinity for guns. It doesn’t seem to tie in to the ‘thou shalt not kill’ theme discussed above. In my opinion there are too many guns in America. And in truth there are just as many opinions about guns in America as there are actual guns. I just don’t think guns are necessary. I don’t understand why Mr. Heston[15], who of course once famously played Moses in a motion picture, says that they are. Mr. Heston says that Americans have the right to bear arms and this, of course, is true. But it’s a nonsense rule, because it is a frontiersman rule. There are no frontiers now. Nobody now goes out onto a wooden porch with a shotgun and says to an unknown visitor, “What do you want?” I mean, nowadays we all live civilized lives. We don’t need guns. You call at the house, you are invited in and you sit down and talk.

  I think the fascination with guns is connected to the American dream of manliness, which obsesses American males. Females too. They obsess about the sexes. Women should be feminine and a man should be manly. They’ve occasionally gotten the women to be feminine, but they haven’t gotten the men to be fully manly. Men will go to gymnasiums and build up their muscles until they look quite strange, but they never do anything with them except display them. So, really that’s no help.

  In America, because of the guns, there are a colossal number of shootings. Murders. We hear about them because we live in the age of television. In a time gone by, with no television, it would be years before you heard that there had been a murder in Portland, Oregon. And then you’d think, “I never heard about that. Oh, I wonder what happened.” But now we hear about everything, all the time, as it’s happening. That’s probably a good thing because we now know what a terrible state we’re in.

  In England, if you had a television show with a plot that involved a wife shooting her husband, thinking him to be a burglar, you would have to explain why there was a gun in the house. The husband, before he was shot, would have to say something like, “I have bought my wife a gun because we live 500 yards from the nearest house, and we’ve already been robbed twice.” But in America, she would hear cool padded feet on the stairs, she would lean out of bed and take from the bottom drawer of a bedside cupboard a gun. You wouldn’t see her load it. You wouldn’t see her remove the safety catch. And we would accept that she knows how to use it and effortlessly shoots the intruder dead. No other explanation is needed in America. That’s the right to bear arms.