This Much Is True

"Miriam Margolyes is the oldest person in this group, born in 1941. As someone who studies Victorian literature I knew about her performance of Dickens’s Women , but I haven’t seen her in much. She has a very distinct persona, out of control, ribald, even a bit obscene. She’s not known for being a careful person who’s concerned about what people think; in fact, she likes to shock, and the book’s unbuttoned quality plays to that image. Margolyes grew up Jewish in England, and talks quite a bit about that. She has identified as a lesbian since she was in high school and was fairly out at a young age, which was unusual for her generation; it’s rare to read about women who were openly gay before the 1970s. She describes forming a group called ‘gay Yids’ in the 60s and wearing a ‘gay Yids’ button to the BBC when she did voice work there in 1965. From a gossipy point of view, I learned about a lot of women in the theater who didn’t necessarily identify as lesbians but had a lot of affairs with women. When I talk to young women today about sexual identity, I’m surprised to learn how many of them feel they can’t call themselves lesbians if they’ve ever slept with a man or might ever want to sleep with a man. I’m going to start recommending that they read Miriam Margolyes, because she is not worrying about this one bit. She identifies 100% as a lesbian, because women are who she really cares about, and she has also had sex with a lot of men. By her account, it sounds like her main hobby while a student at Cambridge was giving blow jobs. She has had an unconventional sex life in multiple ways; she and her partner of decades have never lived together. She has interesting things to say about the varied reasons she had sex with men and women: she liked the attention; it made her feel powerful; she was bored. She tells a story of how, late in life, she came across a man masturbating in a park. He sees her and keeps masturbating because he’s an exhibitionist. Instead of screaming or running away or chastising him, she says, ‘Let me help you with that.’ And she does. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . If you want to read about a person who truly isn’t like most other people, you will enjoy this book. That said, the book is somewhat disorganized. It’s mostly chronological, but then there’ll be a chapter about her thoughts on Zionism. Reading This Much Is True is like hanging out with an aunt who’s had a little too much to drink and is letting it all hang out. I thought it was fantastic. At one point, she says, apropos of nothing, “I’ve always felt that smoked salmon was an essential ingredient of any social occasion. But it must, like a woman, be moist.” This too, is a self-help book in disguise, by which I mean: a guide to living. Margolyes has interesting things to say about failure and success, about facing and overcoming challenges. She was never a megastar, but always earned a living doing voice work and acting, despite not being conventionally beautiful, which for women usually severely limits their ability to make a living as performers."