Welcome to the La Kretz Designer Request Lecture at the University of Liverpool.

Normally, of course we would be holding this lecture in Liverpool, but that's not possible, but we're delighted to be able to stage the event here as a webinar.

The signer lecture is funded by a generous legacy bequest from the Blue Crescent designer who was known as like C and was a lecturer in French and Italian at the University.

She worked at the University of Liverpool from 1964 until 1988.

And she was clearly a larger than life character. I still sometimes meet people who knew La Kretz's owner and talked to me about her warmth, her hospitality, her great care for students.

They also described her as quite an indomitable character, somebody who had very strong views and didn't give ground easily.

This legacy enables us to have an annual lecture in her name, normally a lecture which has something of a party atmosphere where we follow up the formal part of the evening with wine and food.

However, you'll have to bring your own wine and food tonight.

Nonetheless, we have a great lecture and more about that in a moment.

Legacy gifts are a significant source of donation to the University and benefit the institution long into the future. They helped to fund our groundbreaking research, scholarships and bursaries and enable us to provide great facilities for our students.

Italian has been taught at this University since 1881, and Italian Studies is part of our Department of modern languages and cultures.

It's a small friend, the community of academic and teaching staff with research and teaching interests covering contemporary fiction, linguistics, film, and cultural study.

Here from the Department of Italian to introduce tonight's lecture is doctor Mark Powley, and I'll invite him now to introduce our speaker, Simonetta Aniela Homby.

While you're listening to Simonetta lecture, you can post questions in the question and answer section and I'll be back after the lecture to put some of those questions to simulator. So please enjoy the lecture and Marco. Please, could you now introduce our speaker? Thank you for introducing me Fiona for a simple bonasera

OT good evening everyone. I am particularly pleased and honored to introduce our gas for the ninth Italian annual lecture because our influence and impact on society go beyond the literature. In fact, simulate Aniello Hornby is not only a prolific and celebrated brighter, she's also a lawyer. She cofounded the community legal practice specializing in all aspects of family law. She has been lecturing.

In child care law for many years and 480 years, she was the president of the special educational needs and disability tribunal, or the big novel Lamina, Laura Oldman picture was published in Italy in 2002 and was awarded many prices including default privilege, literary price. They straight surprise for fiction, and lemon mulada has been translated into many languages.

Hand has been recently published as a graphic novel as well over the last 20 or so, so assimilators written many novels, including the Marchesa, the nun, and she has also published memoir in Lummy Alondra and books of recipes. An edge account as well.

Her books are international bestsellers, but simulator is so much more than a lawyer and writer. She's a frequent guest on radio and television in its play. In fact, she has been the protagonist with our son George of a couple of brilliant TV programmes, including the docufilm eel, George and nessuno popularity, which are both excellent examples of how I socially committed audiovisual product.

Can raise awareness amongst the general public about different forms of disability.

Simulator has always tried to link her professional work as a lawyer, as a writer or as a public figure to support causes of relating to domestic violence and to those on the margins of society and her social engagement perfectly aligns with the University of Liverpool's commitment as a global or an inclusive institution to diversity and equality. And I'm thinking you're in particular about our institutions engagement with their.

Seen as one charter which is now standing initiative before the advancement of gender equality. Now the focus of simulators lecture tonight is the reflection starting from personal experience on developments in Italian society, with a special focus on women and simulator. Will discuss the readership of Italian literature with special reference to female author shape and the publishing worlds, but are stop here because I don't want to spoil.

Maneaters lecture so just to conclude, we're really delighted to welcome Sunita Aniello Harvey to deliver or deny in through cracks at Sinai. Bequest lecture, so a warm virtual, Italians cows welcome to simulate a thank you auntie wanna turn yellow Hornby. I'm a Sicilian, I have the dual nationality, Italian and English and I've lived in England since 1917.

I have become a novelist that in my middle age.

And I consider myself a British citizen and an Italian and also a Sicilian.

Women in Italy, like everyone else in Europe, have had the very difficult life.

I think in the last 2000 years, that means forever.

Stock of the Renaissance of the period when Italy was really the leader in the world where?

You salts respect for Art Freedom. Love Science became so important and were developed fantastically well in northern Italy. After Naples. A little bit less in Sicily, where I come from.

Women writers began and continue to be little known.

I mentioned Victoria, Kelowna, possibly the first one who became very famous from a Noble family. She was.

The writer in the poet who had an extraordinary relationship with boner OT Beacon, Angela Boner, all TA man, who was the greatest artist of the time. Among the many other great artist, had a relationship intellectual with her, which meant that Victoria is still remembered she should be valued more after her and contemporary to her. There were many others who raped who sang.

Cool music as well, but we were the second class citizen that went on and on until the 19th century.

In the 19th century with the.

The revolution with the desire to have new states with all the new things that were coming from England, beginning with the railways, which United places enormously and had an enormous importance to culture. The Grace of women writers was greater and.

Their books were bought and read still.

Considered lower.

In the last century women writers became more respected we had one normal price.

Female graduate delayed. A woman from Sardinia read stories about families and three of the men. 1/4 that's enough little step in the right direction if we are in the right direction.

I became a writer 30 years ago and it was in your world.

Anyway.

I felt that my being a woman was sometimes used to diminish me. Sometimes used to raise me, but I would never treat it as a man as if we were two people who thought and robbed and leave it like that.

It's the sentence of Signora. You know you must have changed because you lived in England. Your marriage to an Englishman must've had an effect on your life.

I wonder the same would have been saved of a man. Your marriage to an Italian woman as an effect on your life, etc.

The greatest Italian right of the last century for me is Elsa Maranta.

She was an extraordinary woman.

Of Jewish origin and possibly Sicilian, it is not clear who was the father.

She married Moravia who was a very famous writer in Italy. I think he was considered greater than it really was because it was one of the angry young men know wanted to change the world.

And she is not recognized for what she is. I find it very painful when I see that her books are absolutely wonderful. Deep knowledge of human beings of history is great and she should be considered the great writer that she is.

In the last 1520 years, there's been a huge growth of women writers or people right under a woman's name, like the case of Elena Ferrante, who had an enormous success not just in Italy but abroad. That was a Noble team.

Italian literature was translated in France in.

Spain in South America, little bit in England, but it wasn't a literature that the rest of the world will look as very important. It is ironic that the Italian book which has been sold and read more in the entire world, is a book called the Geronimo. Stilton is the story of a little animal. Written by Elisabetta Donley and it has combat.

The whole of the world. The other writers that we have in Italy and some of them, I think.

Without that extraordinary.

Good, profound and rightly famous like Andrea Camilleri are always treated in a way as.

A little bit exotic, a little bit different. Not at the weight of the Anglo English literature I speak of coming Larry Becausw. I met him with a normal to meeting. I've read not all his works French too much, but I read a lot of his books and apart from his thrillers which are beautiful, the Montalbano books and he had written incredibly profound and beautiful books which are not translated.

Have not had any of the success that they deserve among the intellectuals coming. Let it is sold and read them, but the prices or the acknowledgement of his greatness from the president of the Republic to say something had never come towards in why?

I think the cause.

It was a modest person who doesn't care.

I think the cause is like me Sicilian about concede that other exotic or sometimes a little bit.

Below the others because of Mafia and cause we're Sicilian.

And Andrea was a man of tremendous intelligence, integrity and modesty.

And I speak of him as if he were alive, but he died last year. Andrea didn't care with generous, he was happy to write. He was an intellectual, but he had given up.

Being treated or trying to be treated as a writer, he was always the father of the thrillers.

Is everywhere in the world somehow asirra lower than literature? It's my great pain that he was never considered for the Noble Prize in my little I tried and maybe it could have happened in the future, but he died.

Going back to the women.

Some of the Italian women writers deserve to be in a better in Italy and better abroad and just giving some names, Matilde Serao a woman of the last century and a list of names which I read with pride and sadness. So little there known civilian eramo, Anna Banti, Maria Messina.

A woman who lived in Sicily was not secede. Unread beautiful books about Sicilian, their own father in law's Sicilian Nair it woman rate just with a name like an actress like a singer. No surname. I say the filter of told her about this summer and another Jewish Great Writer. Natalija Ginsberg Super Literature, very little known now the Rosello sisters, particularly Amelia.

Women of the end of the 19th century of believes strong. He rhotic figures little known.

Alberta checks for this. That Xamarin, who is at success and.

And then coming to my generation, I would say little bit 'cause those books are published.

And the cause, I think that one must look at the past and the present and look forward.

It enough around, there's an extraordinary success. I've read most of their book, her books, and.

She isn't a real person.

I know who she is and therefore I would say nothing other than.

The books are beautiful.

The clever the clever way in which it has been solved is.

Something that other publishers should consider and the high quality of the work and the sensitivity to the world today so that these her books are red everywhere in the world and people identify with those two girls from Naples is an extraordinary success editorial.

Personal and.

Credits in almost credit too.

The father and the mother of Elena Ferrante.

I rejoice when Italian literature is.

No, and interest the British people, and in the last few years, oddly enough, the fear of Brexit has increased the interest in Italian literature.

It's I think something which touches me and I'm British and it an Italian Becausw the break between Britain and the common market. I think it definites and possibly sadly maybe the beginning of the crumbling of the Common Market and the reverse of a much smaller one. But now the British have a knowledge and a sensitivity, and I think almost the pride of the literature.

In Italy of women and men considering themselves Europeans, whether or not we have the flag with the stars of Europe.

A few words I would like to give about what is the future. I would like more English women.

For writing Italian, if they live in Italy they exist. Are there intellectual they can contribute? I would like more Italian women who live in England to participate in the world of literature and write in English. It is not easy.

I am an English solicitor. my English is not perfect now. Certainly wasn't that perfect.

When I started being a lawyer.

But I did go ahead. I had to. I lived in England and had two children. My husband was English. That was my life and either the Italian law degree.

Sometimes I had comments which were patronizing and unpleasant.

Uh, put up with them. I didn't react as I would have liked and I'm just giving you a little example of it. Once I was introduced to a High Court judge at the party and.

I knew he was I've been before he before and any and he said oh this is on be I do remember you very well. I'm always very attentive to what you say when you are before me.

Articule Oh no. He said is because otherwise I don't understand what you're saying. It was an English partner.

I replies quick as I could. I said excuse me, I said but.

When I am, before you do I win the cases or do I lose them? Oh no, this is only you win them. Thank you. I said and turned my back to him and now that behavior to get it today should not be permissible and possibly doesn't happen. But I'm not sure.

There's almost something about the foreigner in Italy in England. In the world there's always something about a woman who is a foreigner everywhere in the world.

In spite of the women leaders we have had everywhere starting from India and there's always something which a woman can see as a warning, you're going into waters which are not for you. You may draw and my help to you is to reap.

Italian literature has something to contribute. It brings you to a better knowledge of Italy, which whatever is the future, will remain.

The place where the Renaissance was born, the place where the New World started and continued, and also will help each of you to see the difficulties we had and to go ahead in a world which I hate is going to be better. But I fear may have tremendous challenges for all the young women of today beginning from my granddaughters.

Writing is a job.

One cannot write for fun. 1 cannot rise for passion.

If one does not have enough money to pay for the mortgage, the House, the food, the education of the family.

And we women have not done with.

We were paid less than the man.

Always, always remember Jane Austen. For me, the greatest British writer ever and the difficulties she had in being parade and the help that she had to seek from the main in her family.

Therefore, it's very interesting to look at women in Italy. How well they do with or not they deserve it.

There's no statistic.

That separates women from men.

We all together that's fine. I accept it. I wouldn't like to be in a lower.

Section, however, it is important to note his how in the last 20 years when we have come forth with great.

Books written by great women. How we have done in 2009.

We have had seven women.

Who write books which were in the class efex and some one price is the Margaret Madison Teeny interesting of.

In English, mother was very like Asante Modigliani, the ground dumb from Lombardia Daria Vineyard, a journalist.

I was there as well. Lechat Roy Easy arrived them Michaela merger Awoman from Sardinia and JP Kuchary, whom I regret to say I've never read. I read books of all the others and there were seven. How many men were there at the same time in the top so it sold 25.

With 32 books.

7.

25 is a huge difference.

Jumping a bit more we go do some 2014.

How many women do we have? Some of the same as before?

And is that enough around this great, wonderful author who has conquered the world enough speaking before they will speak again 9.

With eleven books and the man 30 with 37 books.

That's 2014 this girl 2019, very close to us now women.

12

presence is books 18 and the man 2535 books. So we've gone forward, but it's not enough. Who are those women who have actually made that for us? Some? A Journal is to become writers.

Many of them.

Are women who wanted to write very much who were little known anywhere else except in their circle and managed to find it?

First of all, an editor Blipped in them and then to write books which attracted people.

Quite a lot of those conferences silly, and I'm very proud of them. One of them, Steven Ya Ouchi. I met last year, is a woman who works in a school boys written historical work on a family who were from Calabria but came to Sicily and make fortune like many people have done and a book has been an extraordinary success.

On the whole, however, we like behind the man.

Why?

I didn't accept that we are not as good as they are.

I accepted that women may not want to go into a career which could be difficult.

Which, if you which can give also a lot of humiliations and difficulties.

And finally, because we women we Italian women in particular have the burden of our family of our children raising them. The businesswoman who dedicates herself to business is a woman who comes from possibly a burst in a family where that was the model. Or has it great success which allows us to pay for the good care of her family. But many of the writers I know normal women like me. We have to struggle to write to the family.

With a job with the husband with a boyfriend and inner circle in which the woman who is a writer is the oddity, the man who's a writer is somebody to admire, but we're altered that stranger.

I am very proud of the fact that a lot of those women come from the South.

The South has always been.

A great

subject.

For people to write about and the South of Italy has always been the subject of burgers work, for example in the 19th century, the poverty that dispelled the sicilians after the unity of Italy, which was in the 1st 20 years total disaster, brought poverty, helped Mafia to grow and flourish and go into government, and is appeared, which is still remembered.

Everywhere in Sicily and in the South.

It is also because women feel shy, they don't want to enter into a world where they may not succeed and that's why I would like to speak to you.

To read the Italian literature, Italian female literature to see how difficult life is and how so many women of talent have not had the success that I think they deserve.

And also because traditionally writing is not a profession that guarantees that you bring bread on the table. Every day is a job that depends on the success of the last book on the other writers that appear and a job which today implies also an ability to speak in public, the ability to travel to leave the family to participate to the prices to be a public person.

Some people like it, some people don't like it. Some people would like to do it but can't.

I want to finish with Maria Atanacio. She is a Sicilian writer whom I consider.

A great Italian writer and woman who has.

Being a teacher head of the school and the writer forever, she was born knowing that she wanted to be a writer.

She has been published that by many small editors. She has written poetry, historical work, novels, historical research. She's incredibly wide and a delightful person to meet, and she has now.

And she's a little older than me and 75 she has now had the success that was the night to her in the last 50 years of career.

Some of her works been translated in English as the work of many of our Italian writers, but still a small percentage.

I think a writer often dies in translation unless the translation is excellent and it is very difficult.

I've seen writers were flushed.

In translation with great translators, it's very difficult.

Now, writers have to speak to the public, and if you didn't speak English, which is now the world of the world, you can contribute. Yes, you can do it through. A translator doesn't look natural.

Their shy off going away of living home or leaving their children for going into another world. We are still.

They early.

Women were emancipated in that.

Then I look at the prices in Italy. I didn't believe him in the tree prices, why?

Because I believe that many of the literary prizes in the world, beginning with the Nobel Prize have to respond to the fashion, had to respond to the politics with a small P or a big P of the price, and therefore they are useful tools. But they're not tools by which I would rate a writer.

Italy has had one woman Noble Prize in three men and one looks if the other countries one would see very.

The same.

We still are considered not worthy of prizes.

I have a pact with my publishing house that they will not put me forward. It, price it and then happily in my.

Not being known as much as I could, anybody found make less money. At least I keep my dignity, but I would.

Encourage women to write. I would encourage the younger to say what they are and to shout and scream.

For being treated just as men.

As should be.

Because after all, in Britain we went had the wait at the end at the beginning actually of the.

The war in Italy. We had the right to wait only.

When I was one year I was born, the night the right to wait.

But the right to right? We almost have it, and we must use constantly. This is something that I want to be of encouragement for. Every woman in Italy or in Britain.

If you like literature, if you would like to write or if you like reading what other people write or want to work in the publishing world, don't look at the little jobs. Look at the top, you can become another indifferent, namely another envious scenario and have the success not only for you, but for all the women of the world who like literature.

Good luck.

Simonetta you talked about the fact that you are where a lawyer and I know that you set up your own legal practice in 1979 that you obviously specialized in family law in Brixton, in London, and had a very successful legal practice. So a couple of questions.

55 when you already had all of that, what motivated you to turn to writing? And there's a question here from Eli asking How does that legal background feature in the writing that you do?

I'll reply to base questions at the same time I became a lawyer because I wanted to be a lawyer, had a low degree when my children were little. I worked in the city and it was wonderful becausw the clients were reach, which means that I could spend all the time I wanted to learn and to prepare my case as well, but I had to work Saturday. Sunday. I couldn't be a mother, so I left it and I went to work for the local authority, the London Borough of Lambers.

As children's solicitor in that Department I worked there for two years. Then there was a change of politics and I realized that things were doing with going badly for the children in care before the lack of money and commitment by the council. And that's why I set up my own practice with a friend of mine, Marcia, leaving. We decided to do it quickly. We worked first in the top floor of my house. Then we took an office.

Then we did better than Marcia went abroad with her husband, and I was on my own and I had wonderful stuff.

Male and female, and we work very hard. It's it was a great success, not because of me, but because I think I pushed all my lawyers to do their best. And because the clients that came understood that it was a fight.

To win, but also a fight for justice because I was the children's lawyer, so I had to tell some mothers your child is better off without you because you're a drug addict. Will you let him be adopted? Hard, difficult, but we manage that now. I rate always the statements of my clients. So it was a sort of art of writing. I had to write things which were true which were simple in English because the client had to understand them.

And which had to attract the attention of the judge? There's nothing worse than a judge who gets bored. So I learned in a way to write and to attract the attention of the reader. As a lawyer. I never wanted to be a writer of novels or poetry because I thought it was beyond me, frankly.

And I became a right tab because of boredom.

On the 2nd of September 2000, I was flying back to London from Italy and I was at the airport of Rome and my bag was full of the jams that my mother had prepared for me.

It was before the twin towers so I could have jumps with me and I had no pen, no pencil, no paper to write, nothing, just the job jacks and there was a huge delay due to British Airways for about four hours and I've nothing to do at the airport and in the boardroom. The album peeker came a story of a young girl lose collecting.

Almonds and becomes a maid in the family and it was so fascinating that I couldn't hear the announcements of the delays stories at opposite. A couple were going to London, kept miles on them and got on the plane following them. The film that I saw in my head finished when we were over Paris. I got home in the evening. I called my mother saying I was late.

And I said I'm writing a book and she said what came to my head. I wrote it for a year.

I finished it. Nobody believed me that I could write it. Neither did I, but I had to write it and I send it to two people and one of them gave it fell to nail either one and give it to another somebody else. And that was it. So I'm a writer by chance. And then I continue to ride quite honestly, be cause for the money. I, the album Picker went very well. My son got multiple sclerosis which is.

Terribly honest, so I thought if I need money, I don't make much money as a child care so Lister as I did on legal aid, I'll make money from the books and that was it.

Hey so, so there you were. You were used to giving voice to some. Some people in very difficult circumstances whose voice had to be communicated to the judge and then suddenly you have the writers voice almost accidentally. Did you have an intention then about how you wanted to use that voice? Or did you just kind of fall from one novel to the next?

Writing is beautiful, actually, because it gives you tremendous power and it doesn't harm anybody. Whenever I have to kill one of my unpleasant characters, it's quite pleasurable to get rid of him. And we all hate to say that maybe it's my Sicilian Blood. But is dinner tonight I'm going to kill the father of this nasty family. I liked it, so it gives you freedom gives you power. It also gives you the chance to go through.

Beautiful things I like. Describing landscapes I could spend days writing a landscape of a place I like like the skyline of London, which I think is beautiful. Then I know that my detail will cut it down to a page and not 3 pages, but I accepted he knows what to do and I do as he says. So yes, writing is very beautiful is very pleasant.

Anne brings many as I said. Also, I think I write thinking that people share the pleasure I have in writing or when I write political things or things about injustices that they will feel the same sense of injustice that I feel.

OK, so.

So you talked about the apparent reluctance in Italy to really recognize women writers. The value that they bring to Italian culture. There's a number of questions being asked by our audience tonight about Elena Ferrante and the impact that she has had on maybe why she hasn't had more impact.

Perhaps writers, but perhaps her readers haven't been as tempted as you might imagine to go on and discover some of the other Italian female writers that you've talked about this evening.

I have seen wonderful books of women, and I've also seen that they don't sell as well as they should sometimes.

The also is very shy and it doesn't like going around now. It's very tiring to go around and sleep one night here. One night there. I mean I was used to eat because when I was a part time chairman, Judge of the tribunal I had to go from one town to another and some Italian women don't like it so they are shy or their husbands and their children don't like it. So there's this element now. The Elena Ferrante stories. Fantastic success.

We know it's not a woman only, and but you know we leave it as it is. So in a way, it might have frightened other women in writing thinking all goodness gracious and are never be like I encourage young girls and old women and women, obviously to write, because obviously you're not going to lose anything. Try to write. Don't be upset if you don't have success. It may come later. Or you might.

Be read by 10 people who and change their life. That's enough. I never thought I would be so successful to be honest and confuses me sometimes. But I think one is going to go one by one. I mean, as a lawyer I win a case. I lose a case, but I get on with it.

Thank you Michael.

Yes, there are actually quite a few requests about providing Elise or female writers that you would recommend that that you have mentioned as well during your lecture. So I think that we are recording these actually, so I think that.

You may want to recommend some authors now, but mean the audience can actually reward your lecture again as well, and I'm right down the names, I will write it down, but let me tell you at the moment you know the first name that comes to my mind. Maria Tennessee. Oh Maria Tannazzo is a Sicilian Woman of my age with older a teacher who was written for the last 40 years. Extraordinary books, some of history, some nobles.

Some about the no political issues, just incredibly wide.

Hardly anybody knew her.

An eye she was almost published Witsel area which is the Sicilian Best Publisher. One of the best in Italy. The one of Cammalleri, but she didn't have much luck in the last five years. Her work has been incredibly successful and that is wonderful. She had to wait for a long time and I would recommend a book. Sir absolutely entailed him.

Other books I could recommend them.

I'm not really got to make a list because it's very difficult. Elsa Morante she's dead. I think she's perhaps the greatest Italian writer of the last century. She was the wife of Moravia Famous Man, which I find Despicable. She was treated badly by him. She has written fantastic books. I think she should be read. There's also alda merini. She is a poet from.

Milan, who died mentally ill had poems are wonderful alike. Poetry alike poetry tremendously on that there's another one who is also dead. Clara Sereni.

Brides beautifully gentle, elegant. She is from the North. Absolutely beautiful.

I've got to think because I don't want to.

Forget somebody and I don't want to put people that should be a bit lower, so unclass him like a lawyer. I will give a list.

We will make sure that that list is available to people who've been asking. Thank you, so there's a couple of very big contemporary issues, so I'm Brexit you refer to and obviously the current pandemic. That means that we're having tonight's like during this format.

Will either of those topics be making an appearance in your next book? Would you like to say something about what you're currently working on? There will not be in my next book there. Maybe in my next next book at the moment.

I'm trying to do something I've never done before I'm going to write a trilogy.

So my next book will be the second of the trilogy of the last novel, and then there will be a third, and I want the trilogy to finish in the last century. It's I can't really write more than 20 years. It's so huge. What happened? You know, the gap that I can't really do jump about? I've never done a trilogy and it's very interesting because I got to remember what I wrote before.

I wrote to think of the next book and I got to keep the interest. I the first trilogy I ever read was the Forsyte saga of John, Gaza with him and I loved it.

I was absolutely taken by it. Trilogy's were not common in Italy. I didn't know any, although really, having done classics, I think the Iliad and the Odyssey more than a trilogy. God knows how many books could be in them, so that's what I would like to do.

That's great simulator we we have actually a very interesting question because during your lecture you talk the importance of the transnational and transcultural element, saying about Italian women in the UK and Italian and English women initially to give it a try literature and try to write texts. And what do you think about these new Italian authors, especially women, authors and emerging?

Like a Java **** or and other examples, similar examples that they are using literature to talk about their experience in Italy being Italian but from foreign origins.

Now, I haven't read their books, but I think is wonderful after all. I mean, if I write in English, I would be one of those. Although you know 60 years being in England this time goes. I think it is absolutely admirable when somebody lives in a country and feels able to express herself or himself in that language. I think it should be encouraged because it will bring unity also.

Having been a foreigner in England and elsewhere where I leave them, I realize how difficult it is to be accepted as equal to the people in the country you are. And I mean that also in a different way. I lived in Zambia where in some places I was considered unequal by the Zambian's because I was white and therefore almost superior. So it's This is not just inequality at the bottom, it would be inequality at the top just as bad.

And I think writing in the language of the place you live in is absolutely fundamental. I mean, it wasn't easy for me to decide to be an English lawyer. It wasn't. I know my English is not that good. I mean, I was hearing me a little while ago and of course, in all countries speak better. But you know, that's where I am. So I think it is important that immigrants should participate in the life of the place where they are and every aspect. It doesn't matter if your English is not good.

As long as they understand, or as I said to the judge, I win the case is it's OK.

And there's a question from Martina who has who was asked about the role of the educational systems. So Martina grew up in Italy and remembers studying Italian writers, Italian female writers in school. So I guess the question is, do you think schools and indeed universities could be doing more to promote some of the Italian women writers who you think have such low profile and deserve deserve more attention?

I don't know anything about the Italian schools today, I mean 75, so it's a long time ago I was at school.

I do think that Italian schools are good because I see the children of my nephews and nieces so do well. So I think it could be. I have tremendous respect for Italian schools. State schools.

It's hard work, and the teachers I've met have been dedicated and interested. Whenever I go to a school and it's an honor to go to a school, I always go to the schools. I find teachers who are very much in tune with their students and students have a wonderful relationship with them, which.

I hate to say it's my children didn't have that such good relationship with their own teachers, although you know they were good children and good teachers. So I think Italian schools are perfect place to train girls and two encourage them to write.

Screen, there's a question here from Elianora who says that as a female writer, you said you've always been treated with more or less respect and attention compared to male writers, but never like them. Does this impact the way you write? How do you deal with the category of female literature? Do you embrace it or do you try to escape it?

I've never thought of female literature.

When I was young, I speak French. I learn French, my mother taught me in French and I read the all the books that my mother had and and there was a series of books, Witcher books for girls, love stories. He was a collection rolls or something like that and I read them all because, you know, I didn't have much to do in the country.

I read everything that was around. I don't like female literature as a word as I don't like Mail little China world or transsexual literature in the world or gay literature in the world. I think all human beings, each of us has something to say, so I would.

I would not like it to be say that I my literature is a female literature is a woman who writes it so I didn't write much about men because it's harder for me to get into a man. But I do try. But I realize that most of my characters are female. The easier to write, but that's, I think a defect in me. Something not good in me, which I would like to change.

I was wondering simulator that's just a personal question. Is there is that any any hope for male characters at all?

Well, in whenever I write a book, I decide that I want to have a good male character and then believe me is just gets me very angry. Some female character comes and pushes and falls. It gets an illness because they move and they do things that I don't want them to do my characters, but they do. And then I'm stuck again. Now in the new book.

My hero is a gay man.

And I hope he will be the hero of the book, because that's what I want to do. I dare not ask my editor because if he tells me, well then other woman is stronger. This and that I'll be so upset.

So I don't try.

And and another question is what we say. It's another personal question. Sorry to be so interested.

Because you mentioned as well crime fiction and Camilleri in particular, and you say it important role or Camilleri about you know these kind of gap between high brow lowbrow literature and how crime fiction is being described as a lowbrow literature not deserving to be considered as proper literature for many years. But even today I mean.

Just wondering if you have a. I know that you have written a crime, show stories. If I don't miss a which was publishing an anthology within their Camilleri as well, I was wondering if you have a thought about writing a proper crime novel.

Yes, I have. I've got everything ready in my head actually in my hearing is called Cornelia Zack, so it's got an English name and Zach is Italian name and I rate it. I think about four years ago when I had an operation and then I had the operation and then I forgot it and then filtering only suggested I did another novel and I didn't do it. I'd like to do it and it should be based in England.

And I hate to be able to do it, but every time I start thinking of it again, something else comes and stops me. Maybe I'm scared of it. I should become brave and say that's cornelia Zach. I think it's a good name.

So I hope I will do it.

That's the first I've know to say that to anybody actually.

So you've also written about food.

And I'm I wonder what the what the differences in terms of how you go about constructing a book when you're talking about something like food compared to a novel, which the way you've described your novel writing the stories come to you there in your head, and you're creating that. But a book about food is a little bit different. Can you talk a bit about the difference? Yes, for this memory.

We all eat. I remember what I ate and my family is very greedy. My mother says that the best times with my father during a honeymoon when when they were eating biscuits together and I said. And then my man Jim would say then you don't ask. So I think I come from a family where food and sweets are very important. We don't drink. My father didn't drink and Mama didn't drink so there was no alcohol. It would just fold them and.

I love cooking and I love food because that is the only thing that made us different from the other living creatures on the world. Man became almost sapient through cooking. Its extraordinary fun, things of it and.

When I went to live abroad, my mother gave me a little book with the recipes and I tried to recreate a Sicilian food in Zambia which wasn't so easy. That's where I went as a young bride and food has become for me.

Identity.

You know when I have a bit of cheese and bread, it doesn't matter if it is gender. If I eat it as if he were Cacho and partner, I feel that I'm at home. I PT. People don't cook. I think pleasure that they don't have and I enjoy eating with the family or with friends and talking about the food in my family constantly. We talk of food as waited is too much salt. It is less salted actually been made better by so little why so much?

I mean, it's just as if food was so essential, which I think it is actually and we don't buy ready made food we never did.

So many of the many the audience tonight will be students here in the University who are perhaps learning a language at the moment thinking about.

The possibility of travel is not possible at the moment of course, but also learning about the culture, the food, the film of the countries, whose language is there, studying, what do you think is the most important way into another culture? What's been really important for you as you've moved to different places around the globe?

Anne.

I like to see the relationship between.

The nation and the leaders.

If there is a democracy or not, so if there is respect to what the citizen says.

It just comes from my worship for justice as opposed, and I also like to see the relationship between people within the family because the family is the hub of everything. So I like to see that now.

When I.

Got engaged to my husband who was English obviously and he was an only son.

I discovered the family, which was very very different from mine in many ways. My mother-in-law never liked me because I was a foreigner and she did say she wished martinat modernize English girl and I said sorry about that. My parents never made any comments about him except that the day before I got married, my father went into my bedroom and never come into my bedroom and he said she wanted, I said.

If you want to change your mind tomorrow, don't worry. I'll tell them and I said Papa, you can tell them You can't speak English. Yes, you said I can make myself understood, but I still want to marry him and you never said anything about my marriage and my husband. You know they respected each other. So yes, you know it's not easy. I think women who come go to a foreign country. I've got to be more careful because being women they will. They will always be a man who doesn't like us.

Or likes us and I have not yet seen a country where a woman is treated like a madman. Quality is coming, but is not there yet and I see it regularly in England with pretty young girls who come to stay with me from Italy. And then they find always the boy is.

Was a bit heavy on them. It could be in Italy as well, but in a foreign country is more scary.

Simonetta you've certainly done. You're a bit to help and to bring women's voices to the four and to promote equality, to promote social justice over a very long career. That, as we've heard, has spanned both legal practice and your career as an author.

It just remains for me to thank you very much for your contribution this evening. I think what we clearly heard was the passion that you have for those causes for social justice.

And you've, I think left us all with a thirst to discover some more Italian writers. And I think we will all have a bit of a reading list after after this evening.

So thank you once more. Thank you very much to our audience this evening and for the questions and thank you. Thank you Marco. But most of all seem to Simonetta and we've been very honored to have you so go in peace.

The Elmo's mind can Isaiah lusting for the students if they want to ask me something they can write to me. I reply shortly short sentences and my email is Simonetta dot Hornby. Know on yellow blue.

'cause nobody can pronounce it. So if someone had.hornby@gmail.com and if they say Liverpool, I know where they come from and I'm there to help them because it's part of our duties and a pleasure. Thank you very much for inviting me. Thank you very much for your generosity.

Get out this one.

Will get out soon.

Good evening everyone.