This section consists of selected quotes from Pauline Boty, from Nell Dunn’s “Talking to Women”, originally published by MacGibbon and Kee in 1965. We would like to thank Nell Dunn and Silver Press for allowing us to quote the 25-year old Boty from the book.
The original volume has since been followed in 2018 by a new, expanded edition from Silver Press with an introduction by Ali Smith and a new Afterword by Nell Dunn.
“In 1964, Nell Dunn spoke to nine of her friends over a bottle of wine about sex, work, money, babies, freedom and love. The novelist Ann Quin says she appears to be a ‘singular girl, singular and single’ but questions the use she makes of her freedom. The Pop artist Pauline Boty reveals she married ‘the first man I could talk very freely to’ ten days after meeting him. Kathy Collier, who worked with Dunn in a Battersea sweet factory, talks about what it takes to ‘get out’ of a life that isn’t fulfilling. Edna O’Brien tells us about the time she inadvertently stole a brown georgette scarf and the lesson she took from it: ‘Morality is not the same thing as abstinence.’ After more than fifty years out of print, Talking to Women is still as sparkling, honest, profound, funny and wise as when it was first published.” [from the publisher’s website].
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NELL DUNN Do you think of the future or the present or the past most?
PAULINE BOTY I think of the present. Not much about the future. Well only in terms of sort of like I found myself sort of living my life as though I’d probably only got a few more years to live – because the bomb was going to drop and I found this terribly exciting – not the bomb but living for today.
NELL Do you think that acting has given you a lot of physical confidence?
PAULINE I think it might have probably helped a lot. And also I think it’s nice seeing yourself being somebody else which isn’t quite you but which is all based on you, because it’s always based on you, in acting I think.
NELL And what about mental confidence – do you think that’s a different thing from physical confidence?
PAULINE Oh, yes. Well, I think they’re all interrelated. But probably one of the reasons I married Clive was because he really was – this might be something in me too because I’m very much inclined to play a role that someone sets for me particularly when I first meet people – to accept me quite as a human being you know, with a mind, and he accepted me intellectually which men find very difficult.
NELL Does passion mean anything to you?
PAULINE Well, passion always sounds to me like something without any humour in it at all, and I always find humour terribly interesting, and very much a part of life.
NELL Do you think sex is tremendously important?
PAULINE Well it’s really important really … I think sex can be as varied as being alive can be as varied. I think it has all the variations of being alive and feeling and things like that. Sometimes it can be boring, sometimes it can be a joke, sometimes it can be deep intense sort of – you know it can be all those things and I think that one of the terrifying things about the puritanism that still exists in England today is that people are guilty about sex. I think perhaps not so much younger people who are more guilty about violence than anything else and feeling violent.
NELL Do you feel you want to be 18 again?
PAULINE No, I’d hate to be 18 again. I’d really hate it you know. I like growing older.
NELL Which (painting or acting) do you actually get the most out of doing?
PAULINE Painting. But one of the super things I found when I first started acting was that painting you do alone, you know, and you sit there and it’s your own terrible fight or your own lovely bit, whichever sort of phase it’s in, but it’s really terribly alone and you make the whole thing yourself, the whole construction is, you know – but acting you’re part of a team, a lot of people are dependent upon you, you are very dependent upon other people.
All copyright © Nell Dunn 1965, 2018
Pauline Boty 