I was
born, as far as I knew, the daughter of Alex and Connie Tudor Hart. When I was
seventeen my mother told me that,in fact, my real father was Ewan Phillips the
art dealer with whom she had had a brief affair in the wartime. Alex kindly
allowed his name, Tudor Hart, to be used on my birth certificate.
I
went to a boring local grammar school where the only thing I did of note was to
get pregnant at the age of seventeen. I lived with my boyfriend in Oxford where
I helped him write his essays. I subsequently read French at Kings College,
London. Here, the style I had acquired at Oxford was dismissed as pretentious,
verbose and obscure. I soon changed my ways and enormously enjoyed the course.
After graduating I started doing research in the 16th century and went on to a
lectureship at Leeds University. My next appointment was at Birmingham
University. I also lectured part-time at Warwick. I very much enjoyed teaching
and lecturing. I stopped reading from notes and invited questions. I found the
students very responsive and couldn't understand why most of my colleagues
seemed to regard the students as being too time consuming. I published widely on
French and English writers including Muriel Spark. I also had two more
children.
The Acting Head is my first work of fiction. It
reflects the egocentricity of many university lecturers and the prevalent
vindictiveness between colleagues. Also, in the 1990s the function of
universities began to change as they became obsessed with making money and
enhancing their prestige through research. Students mattered less although the
money they generated mattered more.
