Caledonian Road

by Andrew O'Hagan

Crimson-bobbed, lover of Victorian shoes, blamer of men, head of department: to say Jennifer was a correctness vigilante would be to miss the main thrust of her propagandistic life. She had searched the universe (and the world’s archives) for evidence of famous writers making sexist remarks in or around the year 1888. She had lately moved on, and was eating up days, nights, weekends and research grants, completing a book called Foreign Children, devoted to the idea that James Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, was a blood-thirsty racist and a pederast. So far as anyone could tell, Jennifer had never laughed out loud. She was rumoured to have drunk a single gin and tonic sometime in 1986. Now she was in charge of the Wastepaper Subcommittee, an actual thing, set up to ensure that no one would harbour in their offices any bin-like receptacle. They were banned (wasteful). ‘I suppose it would be difficult for a wastepaper bin not to be wasteful,’ Campbell once said.