Before my book, the most common assessment of Eleanor Marx is "Yes, she's great but basically she's in the shadow of her father." Absolute bollocks. She fought him, she resisted, and she was not a kind of trocadateur of his ideas.

We're all story-telling creatures, and also I think that's the point about biography because the life is exemplary.

The trade unions in the UK are campaigning around zero-hours contracts, which isn't about feminism, but it's a feminist issue. Women are affected by zero-hours contracts, and the recession has and is affecting women more than men.

Eleanor [Marx] was involved in the 1889 Paris congress resolution that established May Day as an annual demonstration of the international solidarity of labour in the demand for a legal eight-hour day.

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

One of the key things about the entitlement and power of patriarchy, but also within feminism, is not that it's wilful nastiness. But you can't ask for permission. You can negotiate and you can bring people on board and you can build a base but you can't expect for it to be given.

Men want to destroy the women: you've become bigger than me, people love you more, you have a public platform, that's my space you're taking up. I can't just divorce you, I have to destroy you.