10 lessons I’ve learnt from the women I’ve interviewed

Plus one for luck

Clockwise from top left: Lisa Taddeo, Barbara Blake Hannah, Abi Morgan, Bobbi Brown, Isabel Allende and Kit de Waal

1. Sometimes you get what you think you’ve always wanted and you’re just too bloody knackered to enjoy it
TBH I knew this before I spoke to Lisa Taddeo (author of the smash hit Three Women) back in June, but an hour on zoom to her fully clarified it for me. I know she won’t mind me saying, she was knackered. The book that had made everything possible (not least of which was a new house) and fulfilled her wildest dreams had also taken over her life. We are quick to yell about over-tight diamond shoes and tiny violins when people we perceive to “have it all” dare to mumble about how they might like to sleep for a week (how dare they?) but Lisa was spot on when she talked about the way success is a stitch-up, designed to exclude fam…