2013 Annual Report - Jesus College - University of Cambridge

HISTORY I Jesus College Annual Report 2013 23
(with a two-week deadline for checking and
indexing) on the day I have gone into
hospital. The first time to have a baby, and
the terms for maternity leave for the
self-employed are meagre. The second time
to have brain surgery, and the unwell
self-employed writer is uncomfortably
classed with those seeking disability benefit.
It would be best, therefore, to draw a veil over
the quality of my indexes.
A secure salary aside, what I miss most as
a free-lance is colleagues and the separation
of work and home. During my time at Jesus
as a Research Fellow I was very attached to
my small office and lunch time conversation
with congenial colleagues. When I lived in
France my office was in the part of our house
that had been a second-hand bookshop.
It could only be reached via a trapdoor into
the kitchen. This level of the separation of
domesticity and writing was perfect.
But since returning to Britain, Florence
Nightingale’s exasperated cry that ‘women
never have an half hour . . . that they
can call their own’, has emerged frequently
from my spare-bedroom-cum-study.
Florence Nightingale took to her bed.
Fortunately, my husband has just finished
building me a writer’s shed in the garden.
And when it comes down to it, Virginia Woolf
was right. A free-lance historian and a
mother needs a room with a lock on the door,
or in other words, the power and space to
think for herself. I am hoping that when the
proofs arrive for my next book they will find
me serenely at work in my shed.
Lizzie Collingham is the author of: Imperial
Bodies: The Physical Experience of the Raj; Curry:
A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors; The Taste of War:
World War Two and the Battle for Food.