Betty Herbert

Betty Herbert's new book, The 52 Seductions, is released this week, and has just been reviewed on Night and Day by the author Christina Hopkinson. We're delighted to publish a special Spotify Sunday selection from Betty herself — one channeled through her two protagonists, Betty and Herbert, aka her and her husband. Here it is: Rewind to when I was 18 and about to go off to university. I have only known Herbert for eight months, and everyone (even the sad old men who prop up the bar in the pub where I work), has told me it won’t last. I do not believe them, but in any case I’m anxious. I want something to cling to on the dark evenings when we’re apart. And I first came to know Herbert when he was DJing at my local night spot.

One summer holiday, bored and 11 years old, I embarked on a trawl through the wardrobes in my Grandparents’ spare bedroom. Most of the discoveries were unpromising: an old coat, a great quantity of pillowslips, and my mother’s teenage collection of Elvis 45s, which at that time were below my condescension. But then, in the middle drawer, I found a small stash of books buried beneath an ageing electric blanket – my Grandma’s Jackie Collins collection. Jackpot. I spent a happy afternoon riding the giddy waves of such an illicit oeuvre, without ever once wondering whether they took Gran on a similar journey. In any case, within a few weeks I was at secondary school, and a well-thumbed copy of Judy Blume’s Forever was passing between us.