I drove to Mary Ann Sieghart’s office in Wiltshire on a Sunday. Just after Stonehenge I turned off the A303 and continued into a village. Her house was the first on the left – scaffolding on the front, cattle grid at the gates.
We had coffee in the kitchen. Then went into her office. I stood by the garden door making sketches on my iPad while the last cherry blossoms shook gently outside.
Mary Ann worked at her desk while I drew. Her laptop was piled on top of books; behind it, a camera on a tripod, which I guessed was the setup she used for recording podcasts. As she worked, we chatted. Occasionally she read aloud something new she had just found, relating to her book.
The book has already been published. But she keeps on top of the research because she is often challenged – typically by men – about the evidence supporting her case. “I’m able to tell them the very latest,” she said.
The book is The Authority Gap. Its thesis, in a nutshell, is that men are assumed to be competent until they prove otherwise, and women, until they prove otherwise, are assumed not to be competent.
Over lunch (Greek-style stuffed chicken with lots of oregano) Mary Ann gave a demonstration by describing a thing that often happened when she was assistant editor at The Times. At parties, she said, conversations often went like this:
“What do you do?” a man might ask her.
“I’m a journalist,” she’d reply.
“Oooh! Freelance?”
“No, full-time job.”
“Oooh! Where?”
“The Times.”
“Ooooooooh!”
Then he’d ask what she actually did at The Times. Guess what sound came out of his mouth when she told him.
I have a mother, a sister, a wife and a daughter. I am afraid Mary Ann may be right.
The room in Wiltshire reveals her. A shelf of books written by her father, and a drawing he made when he was young. Her own book. A red artwork she made resting on a cardboard box; another behind the sofa. A vase of daffodils she brought in from the garden today.
And, tucked into a corner a bag filled with balls of wool.
The first time I met Mary Ann, she interviewed me on her BBC World Service show, about a book I had written called Sew Your Own – in which I tried to save the planet by making my own clothes.
It made me very happy to see those balls of wool in her office.
The jumper Mary Ann is wearing in this picture was knitted by her – cable pattern, neck ribbing, all of it. She said she had dropped a few stitches, but I could not see any mistakes.
When she saw my finished picture of her, Mary Ann said: “That’s gorgeous.”
Part of Contain Multitudes at Burgh House, 18-23 August 2026.