• Margaret Thatcher

    I had applied for a job at Imperial Chemical Industries in 1948 and was called for a personal interview. However I failed to get selected. Many years later, I succeeded in finding out why I had been rejected. The remarks written by the selectors on my application were: “This woman is headstrong, obstinate and dangerously self-opinionated!”

  • Michael Symmons Roberts

    Jairus

    So, God takes your child by the hand
    and pulls her from her deathbed.
    He says: ‘Feed her, she is ravenous.’

    You give her fruits with thick hides
    – pomegranate, cantaloupe –
    food with weight, to keep her here.

    You hope that if she eats enough
    the light and dust and love
    which weave the matrix of her body

    will not fray, nor wear so thin
    that morning sun breaks through her,
    shadowless, complete.

    Somehow this reanimation
    has cut sharp the fear of death,
    the shock of presence. Feed her

    roast lamb, egg, unleavened bread:
    forget the herbs, she has an aching
    fast to break. Sit by her side,

    split skins for her so she can gorge,
    and notice how the dawn
    draws colour to her just-kissed face.