It is disturbing to imagine a figure of apparent dignity and autonomy, one who achieved such mastery in her field, as weak enough to indulge this sor… - Megan Nolan

[H]is working-class background became embroiled in a circular logic with his misogyny, where [Russell] Brand's sexism was condescendingly validated by his class credentials and vice versa. Brand can't help speaking about women that way, that's just what someone with his background is like, people seemed to shrug – neglecting to recognise that this is not a condition of working-class people. In this way, he was allowed to be openly misogynistic for years, with anyone who objected to his presence dismissed as stuffy, classist or incapable of humour.

I've lived in London for three years. I hadn't spent much time in Britain before my arrival and had no particular feelings toward the English. I expected them to react to me with similar neutrality. What I didn't expect was the toxic mix of dismissal and casual disdain. It would have been easier, perhaps, if it was all as overt as potato jokes. But what kills you is the ignorance; what grinds you down is how much they don’t know about the past and, if they do know, how little they care. It's a strange and maddening thing to discover about the people who shaped your country’s fate and who are poised to do so again.

Though there is more I could say on this – details that would both elicit sympathy and make me look like a spoiled little shit – that was all there really was to it. The slow, boring poison of drink and secret-keeping, spread out into every part of my life, so that nothing was safe or good any more. Until I woke up one day and realised I could not remember the last time I had read a book.