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Two years after her conviction for assault, Marianne Martindale, female disciplinarian, has resurfaced. Rosie Millard met her
It is a sunny afternoon in London and we are gathered in the Hotel Russell waiting for a literary press launch to begin. No one is quite sure what to expect.
"We received some publicity material. It seemed all right," says a man from Bookseller magazine. "But now I'm here I sort of feel as if I'm in a different world."
We are awaiting the arrival of Miss Marianne Martindale, promoter of the book. When she finally arrives, it is clear that the man from Bookseller has summed up the situation with perfect accuracy.
Miss Martindale walks into the boardroom, swinging a long cigarette holder containing a pink Sobranie. She is wearing a fur coat, and a Forties black hat with a pheasant feather perched perkily on the brim. She has wing- tipped glasses from which dangle a gold chain. Behind the glasses, her eyelids are weighed down with layers of bright blue eye shadow and long, false eyelashes.
"Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen," she begins in a voice characterised by high-pitched, perfect vowels circa 1950. "I wish to introduce you to something completely new. It is one of those things so obvious, so natural, so fundamental . . . one is surprised that it has not been done over and over again." She pauses, for effect. "The subject of discipline - corporal punishment, spanking, caning and so forth - is of perennial interest."
The man from Bookseller shifts nervously and looks at the table. Miss Martindale continues to smile and read her speech; and as she does, it becomes clear that her book is hardly the stuff of serious literary magazines.
"The book examines," continues Miss Martindale, "the different types of cane and how they should...