Kate Legge

She was a brilliant woman.

She'd studied modern history at Oxford.

She'd married my father, who was a historian.

They were obviously drawn together by a

And then he, of course, his career took off in academia and he was a founding professor of history at Monash University.

And mum was sidelined and not only sidelined in an era where there weren't opportunities for women, but she was also sidelined with a very difficult child at home.

So I tried to look at her in the context of what I now knew about being a mother and the surrendering of self and how difficult that can be and the resentments that you feel.

And she was housebound with this child who was intellectually disabled at a time when there was very little support.

for, you know, parents raising children with emotional disturbances.

And there's a writer who once wrote that motherhood is like a heavy winter coat.

You have to wear it whatever the season.

And I think she just found it.

Oh, that's a good line.

I like that a lot.

It's a great line and it really, because you can't take it off and you can't just discard it.

No matter how much you're sweating and how uncomfortable you are.

You can't take the children back to the desk at the RSPCA to surrender them.

I mean, you've just got to make do.

And she did, but I think she felt utterly unfulfilled.

And my father was just... He graced the academic temples of reason and reading their letters, as I did when I was researching and going back and looking at who she was.