Eleanor Marx was her father's first biographer. All subsequent biographies of Karl Marx, and most of Engels, draw on her work as their primary sources for the family history, often without knowing it. I think if she'd been a son, she would have been referenced more.

When you're writing, you're making decisions about compression and the shape of a life, which are very similar to how we experience our inner consciousness.

My maternal family are South African and when I was small and my parents separated my mother and I went back to South Africa. So for me the emergence of my own childhood consciousness was in the context of 1970s and 1980s apartheid South Africa and the movement there.

For me the fascination with biography is the life of the individual in the context of history.

People don't give up power and privilege out of the goodness of their hearts.

The great difficulty is that you cannot be nice. If you want to take back the power, you have to behave in ways that are not conforming and will not be about pleasing other people.

Eleanor Marx was a pragmatic person of actions and deeds and she was an organizer.