Robyn Doreian
Author Jon Ronson is best known for writing books including The Psychopath Test and Them: Adventures with Extremists. Here, the 59-year-old talks about the women who have influenced his life, including a peripatetic aunt, his wife, Elaine, and Monica Lewinsky, with whom he shared a professional connection.
I grew up in a boring suburban house in Cardiff, Wales. My father, David, managed a warehouse. When I was 19 and had moved to London, my parents bought a hotel. It was a pretty middle-class, non-glamorous life.
My father’s sister, Auntie Mavis, however, was an adventurer. At the age of 19 she and her friend from London went off on a seven-year odyssey. There are photos of her on a shipwrecked beach with opium smugglers. When she returned, she wrote a book and became a Magnum [photographic agency] photographer. I found photographs of the Rolling Stones in my grandfather’s London kitchen for her series, Rock Stars In The Kitchen.
When I was four, Auntie Mavis took a special liking to me. She was like, “He’s the one who’s going to have an amazing life.” She lived in London and sent me cassettes of David Bowie; she was the coolest. Auntie Mavis died of cancer when I was 10. By far, she was the earliest formative woman in my life.
My mother, Paula, is in a home now, but she was always very kind. I remember her taking my older brother, Daniel, and me fossil hunting on the beaches in Penarth, near Cardiff. When I was a feckless 16-year-old, she got me to volunteer at my local radio station. It got me a place in media studies at the Polytechnic of Central London, which set me on my way. That was the best thing she did for me.
Growing up, I was awkward in my own skin and a misfit. I would go to Jewish summer and winter camps where I’d meet really cool girls. The camp wasn’t weird or religious, more listening to Simon & Garfunkel and learning how to smoke. These 15-, 16-year-old girls from London were sassy and funny. It was probably where I had my first kiss.
Our marriage works because we are not controlling of each other. We let the other do whatever they want. But we also watch TV together every night.
While I was at college I had an incredible one-night stand with Clare. She looked like [the actress] Nastassja Kinski. I thought she was amazing. We are still in touch and have a friendship that has endured for life.
David Cardiff was one of my teachers at college. He was a very elegant man who was married to the journalist Lynn Barber – she wrote An Education, which was made into a movie. I was a big fan of hers. After David died in 2003, I got to know Lynn. From her, I learnt how to ask impudent interview questions in ways that didn’t offend.
I met my wife, Elaine, while working for Time Out magazine – she was one of the editors and I was a columnist. She was very together and I was very un-together. We hit it off. She had a beautiful flat and was very glamorous and impressive.
We got married in the late 1990s on a whim. We were on a safari in Africa for a month and were staying in a Victoria Falls hotel, which is now in disrepair. But rules prevented us from marrying in Zimbabwe, so we went to Nantucket, in Massachusetts, and married there.
Elaine is an art consultant and an aesthete. I am not. I never think about the way things look. She did a brilliant job of doing up our barn in upstate New York. Our marriage works because we are not controlling of each other. We let the other do whatever they want. But we also watch TV together every night. Our son, Joel, 28, is practical, thoughtful and sociable, just like Elaine.
Monica Lewinsky and I both started talking about cancel culture at the same time – her 2015 TED Talk, and my book about public shaming. I really like Monica. We’ve met a bunch of times and have done TED events together. We had this shared strangeness in that we started a conversation that had taken over the world. We were both badly bullied at school. I think we understood each other a bit better because of that shared experience. I think she’s done really well at correcting her narrative.
Jon Ronson is currently touring Australia.
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