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There has to be a halt in the gender war and feminism must extend its remit to include the rights of men.

The female writer still going through the doldrums of middle age should look at the advent of the e-book as a blessing. It is such an anonymous medium. The writer can be from anywhere and as old or young as she likes. The quality of the text emerges without frills, without the photo on the back of the book. And should you e-publish it yourself, with any luck a 'proper' publisher, impressed by your skill and panache, will turn it into book as we once knew it, indifferent to your age.

I was young when my first book was published and had quick success. I roared around the world on the Concorde, from one international convention to the next. I like to think it was because I wrote good novels, not because I fluttered my eyelashes, but really, who can say? With age things calm down. Publicity photos give up trying to make you look sexy and try to make you look intelligent. Fortunately, if you just hang in there long enough and hit 80, you will emerge on the other side of the postmenopausal years into bright clear waters - so old as to seem ageless, sexless as a sage, remarkable if not for youth, why, then, for extreme age, and again a salable proposition for publishers.

When I took to writing plays in the '70s. it was understood that if two mature women were talking onstage, audience members would cough and shift in their seats, but if two men of any age were talking, the audience would pay some attention. And if any man of any age and a young woman were alone onstage, you could hear a pin drop. Not much has changed since then. Young, nubile women attract attention, aging women do not - on the screen, on the stage, and I fear for the novelist, on the page.

Young women need classes in low self-esteem, not in high self-esteem. This is the same for both men and women actually. They're brought up now to have an unrealistic view of themselves. It makes them very hard to relate to the real world. It makes them live in a sort of bubble. It makes them long for safe spaces. They won't listen to anybody else. They deny the existence of other thoughts and other people, which makes thought rather difficult for them. It makes them terribly easy to offend.

In my youth, what is now seen as sexual harassment was seen as welcome attention. Actually, if men took notice of you in an office, you were very pleased.

[on Donald Trump] I think Trump hatred is a very foolish move. It seems to me to be a sort of neurotic fear of something new.

Not all women are good women. There are as many bad women as bad men.

We should stop being beastly to the snowflakes since we, their forebears, left them with such a mess to clear up and no tools to deal with it. Today's young grow up into a violent, angry, unstable environment, all too likely to end up jobless, homeless and childless, unlikely to reach their full potential. They are probably the most despairing generation ever conceived. The least we can do is not add to their burden by slagging them off.