The writer and academic Sarah Moss was born in Glasgow in 1975. Her non-fiction includes work on chocolate and polar exploration, and as a novelist she is best known for her 2018 book Ghost Wall.
What’s your earliest memory?
Sitting in the back of a car on a hot day with the door open, my mother wearing a black cape and passing me green grapes. I think it was her graduation.
Who are your heroes?
In childhood, Jane Eyre. I’ve outgrown heroes – we’re all flawed and fallen – but I admire clever women who face down misogyny and racism in public.
What book last changed your thinking?
Christina Sharpe’s Ordinary Notes. It’s a book with a long half-life, still changing my thinking.
What political figure do you look up to?
Josephine Butler.
What would be your Mastermind specialist subject?
Well, I wrote a PhD on romantic-era voyage narratives and then an academic monograph on food and gender in the 19th century, so I suspect that.
What TV show could you not live without?
I’ve never had a TV, so I’ve lived without all of them for quite long periods. But I do like Call the Midwife. It’s far more radical than some people notice, deeply concerned with social justice and centred on the professional lives of women of all ages.
Who would paint your portrait?
James McNeill Whistler or John Singer Sargent. One of those Victorian-era painters who took older women seriously, especially if I get to wear a fabulous dress.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
The smaller ones are the most useful: if you wouldn’t agree to do a thing in the next three weeks, think very hard about whether you want to do it at all. When you’re planning travel, try to block out the day after you get home and count it as part of the trip. (Thanks to Maureen Freely for those.) It’s not exactly advice, but I often remind myself that how I spend the minutes is how I spend my life.
What’s your theme tune?
I’m ashamed to say I that don’t listen to music for weeks at a time. Many of my close friends are very musical but I live in words.
What’s currently bugging you?
The rise of fascism and the end of the world. Also, none of the plastic lids in my kitchen fit the plastic pots.
What single thing would make your life better?
Dog owners keeping their dogs on leads. Actually, let’s be ambitious: reversing the domestication of wolves. But I’d take the end of fascism and/or the restoration of the ecosystem, both of which would probably involve better control of dogs.
When were you happiest?
There’s no hierarchy of happiness, but I look back on backpacking around Iceland with my friend Kathy in the summer of 1995 with great affection. We had no money, no responsibilities, and a shared appetite for adventure.
In another life, what job might you have chosen?
I wanted to be an archaeologist but I had a lopsided English education with no science.
Are we all doomed?
Individually, we’ve all always been doomed – for every birth, a death. Now we’ve collectively doomed our species, yes. I believe that making art is palliative care for humanity, and in some ways it’s an exhilarating challenge.
Sarah Moss’s “My Good Bright Wolf: A Memoir” is published by Picador
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This article appears in the 28 Aug 2024 issue of the New Statesman, Trump in Turmoil