The first dancer of colour to join the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet whose ballet school in Cape Town was closed in the 1970s as he refused to operate under apartheid rules
Top 10 most dislikable characters in fiction
From Tom Wolfe’s ‘master of the universe’ to George Eliot’s vengeful pedant, these are some of the hardest characters in literature to love
‘Proud of his chin’ … Tom Hanks as Sherman McCoy and Melanie Griffith as Maria in The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990). Photograph: Allstar/Warner Bros/Sportsphoto Ltd
‘Proud of his chin’ … Tom Hanks as Sherman McCoy and Melanie Griffith as Maria in The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990). Photograph: Allstar/Warner Bros/Sportsphoto Ltd
LouiseCandlish
Wed 30 Dec 2020 05.00 EST
Last modified on Fri 5 Feb 2021 12.20 EST
At reader events to promote my novels, I find that one question crops up more often than any other: ‘Why do you write such dislikable characters?’ Well, I usually reply, swallowing my defensiveness, don’t all novelists write characters who are dislikable to