Bonnie Greer
The worst gift I’ve ever received was a Shirley Temple doll. I was seven. Her curly blonde hair and blue eyes messed me up. Whenever I drew a self portrait up until the age of 12, it was always a picture of Shirley. Sometimes we don’t realise how deeply children “mirror” and what harm it can do.
Richard Dowden
When I was a child our neighbour was a strange manic major who was obsessed with frogs, owls, stone eggs, wild flowers and railway engines. He spent all his money commissioning models and pictures of them. Whether he liked them or not seemed to be delayed until they arrived. Some he would throw away in a rage, having smashed them violently to pieces. Others he would thrust on my family and insist we put them on display—missing immediately one he had given us a year or two before. At first I treasured them but as a teenager I suddenly became bored of the excess and repetition, as well as the price he demanded in our time and attention. Now many of them decorate my home. I love their eccentricity.
Polly Toynbee
The best present I have ever received was a beautiful blue bike with a basket, given to me by my four children on my 60th birthday. The worst was a pair of pink knickers covered in frills sent to me by American relatives at the age of five, when I was expecting candy canes and popping corn in days of post-war sweet rationing.
The most important present I was given at age 14 by my father was the collected works of George Orwell, who remains the master and the model for the best of journalism.
More: Jemima Khan, Jon Snow and others tell Prospect about their best presents—and the worst—here
The worst gift I’ve ever received was a Shirley Temple doll. I was seven. Her curly blonde hair and blue eyes messed me up. Whenever I drew a self portrait up until the age of 12, it was always a picture of Shirley. Sometimes we don’t realise how deeply children “mirror” and what harm it can do.
Richard Dowden
When I was a child our neighbour was a strange manic major who was obsessed with frogs, owls, stone eggs, wild flowers and railway engines. He spent all his money commissioning models and pictures of them. Whether he liked them or not seemed to be delayed until they arrived. Some he would throw away in a rage, having smashed them violently to pieces. Others he would thrust on my family and insist we put them on display—missing immediately one he had given us a year or two before. At first I treasured them but as a teenager I suddenly became bored of the excess and repetition, as well as the price he demanded in our time and attention. Now many of them decorate my home. I love their eccentricity.
Polly Toynbee
The best present I have ever received was a beautiful blue bike with a basket, given to me by my four children on my 60th birthday. The worst was a pair of pink knickers covered in frills sent to me by American relatives at the age of five, when I was expecting candy canes and popping corn in days of post-war sweet rationing.
The most important present I was given at age 14 by my father was the collected works of George Orwell, who remains the master and the model for the best of journalism.
More: Jemima Khan, Jon Snow and others tell Prospect about their best presents—and the worst—here
