Thank heavens for Peggy Ashcroft

    "[Peggy Ashcroft] came to stay and got 'flu and was in bed and was frightfully bored and said, 'Molly, haven't you got anything you've written that I could read?' So I said, 'No, there isn't.' And then I said, 'Well there is this book and I know it's absolutely ghastly and it's been turned down flat.' And, you know, she was absolutely crazy about it, thought it was wonderful."

    "And was it a terrific surprise, its great success?"

    "Yes. I was simply ecstatic over the Booker ... too extraordinary."

That's an excerpt from a conversation between Molly Keane and Polly Devlin, and the book in question - hitherto consigned to a drawer - was, of course, the Booker-shortlisted Good Behaviour (Salman Rushdie won that year with Midnight's Children), which her publisher had rejected as "far too black a comedy". The passage is taken from Writing Lives: Conversations Between Women Writers edited by Mary Chamberlain.

PS Molly Keane's Irish home is now available as a writers' retreat.