WALDEN’S WORLD
Prue’s un-pc book needs to be published
Ever since Prue Leith declared my homecooked biscuits “little pieces of culinary genius” on national television, I’ve had a special place in my heart for the Great British Bake Off judge.
Those may not have been the exact words Leith used when my husband, Piers Morgan, presented her with the biscuits on
Good Morning Britain last year, but by “they taste 100 times better than they look”, I’m pretty sure that was what she meant.
And now, the 80-yearold has gone and won my eternal admiration by branding PC publishers “ridiculous” at the online literary festival, Lockdown Litfest.
“I have a half-written novel which I abandoned because I slightly fell out with the publisher,” said the 80-year-old at the weekend, “because they kept wanting to tell me what was politically correct.”
Having been warned that there were things neither she nor her fictional characters could say, Leith declared the whole situation “ridiculous” and gave up on the novel. “If I want to write about some prejudiced, white, middleclass male who is a racist,” she went on to explain, “I should be allowed to do that.”
Back in the day many people were. There’s even a word for the books they wrote: classics.