101 Faces - 8

36-40, more people, people with faces ....

CAROLE CADWALLADR

 Just look at this world now, where someone is doing this rigorous investigative journalism, exposing secrets that fundamentally alter our democracy, and it’s so obvious who the people ridiculing her at every opportunity are, it’s so obvious who’s not giving her a platform – it’s so obvious who they are and what it means … and yet it just carries on.

Who honestly doubts that she's right about 98% of this stuff, that it's the biggest journalistic story of the age and that, across government, wealth, broadcast, there is a huge vested interest in suppressing it which is completely undemocratic? Do people really doubt it?

MEYER LANSKY

I shouldn’t … but … Lansky is an intriguing figure. The coldness, the mystery, the possibility of vast power. The long life he lived, the characters he inspired, the hands seemingly kept clean.

VENUS WILLIAMS

This supposedly lesser Williams, who’d have won several more Grand Slams if not for her sister, who ceded the spotlight with such grace, who has ceased to be recognised as the pioneer and as a star on her own terms, who keeps going, recovering from a horrible autoimmune illness to reach Grand Slam finals in her late 30s, who fought for equal pay, though sometimes seems almost ethereal. 

BRIAN DENNEHY

“Get back, here, Dennehy, and that’s an order”. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about your orders, Chief, I’ve got real police work to do”. “Dennehy! Dennehy! Fuck you Dennehy! Fuuuck you!”

This is the show they never made called 'Dennehy', starring Brian Dennehy as Brian Dennehy, a tough-as-nails maverick New York cop who doesn't play by the rules They should have.

DENIS SPOTSWOOD

Well, of course, there are always those people who say “Those are the real heroes, not those footballing prima donna”. It’s true, I suppose. It’s not my worldview, though. And my appreciation of military strategy stops somewhere between the Battles of Salamis and Hastings. So, how can I at least pay some mind to military heroes? This guy! Not only is his picture the very essence of the dashing English airman, but he was my great-uncle. He was a wartime pilot and went on to be Air Chief Marshal. And what’s funny is I did not grow up in a patriarchal family – it was matriarchal. Nearly all the men that might have been patriarchs were dead, overseas or absent in a not-up-to-it kind of way. But I suppose our Number 1 patriarch (I remember him as a charming fellow, much loved by many, who died on Remembrance Day 2001) was as deeply representative of the overarching patriarchy as you can get, so, you know, swings and roundabouts.