Those silver spoons just hog the limelight

 
21 January 2014

While it’s well known that privately-educated alumni are over-represented in City boardrooms and on the Parliament front benches, attention is less often paid to writers and novelists. With former private school students making up 61 per cent of Booker Prize-winning novelists, the Royal Society of Literature hosts a debate at the Radisson Blu Edwardian Bloomsbury Street Hotel in Bloomsbury on Thursday on Silver Spoons: Can You Write Without One?

“As someone allegedly born with a silver microphone in my mouth, I don’t think silver spoons are necessary,” says Jonathan Dimbleby, who chairs a debate between ex- Home Secretary Alan Johnson, Booker-shortlisted author Stephen Kelman and poets Kate Fox and Salena Godden. “What matters is the urge to write, to have something to write, and the confidence to write it,” says Dimbleby, who adds silver spoons “clutter the mind.” And the cutlery drawer.

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