JOANNA TROLLOPE : Why I apos;ve Finally Given Up On Men

One of the first things Joanna Trollope does when she arrives at our photo shoot is to turn down a flimsy off-the-shoulder dress.
‘At my age, it's really unsuitable to be sexy,' she says.
For goodness sake, I'm 76. It's unseemly.'
But the fact is, with her chic suit and expensively cropped silver hair, she still is sexy.
She is also one of the most eligible older women in [/news/london/index.html London] — razor-sharp, entertaining, insightful and wealthy.
Her novels, which include The Choir, Marrying The Mistress, A Village Affair and The Other Family, plus the TV dramas adapted from her books, are rumoured to have earned her around £15 million (as well as a CBE for services to literature).

She has a four-storey terrace house in Chelsea, West London. And yet Joanna Trollope, twice married but single for the past 20 years, admits she's finally given up on men.
Joanna Trollope, 76, (pictured) revealed she's taken herself off the market because she doesn't need a man for anything 
‘I've certainly taken myself off the market, yes,' she says.

If you beloved this article so you would like to obtain more info concerning [ Next] kindly visit the webpage. ‘I think many women do. I'm not interested. I don't need a man for anything.
‘Having said that, I do have friends of my age group who only really feel validated if they have a man in their lives. Some women will always flirt and need a man, and will feel themselves to be more authenticated if they've got one.
‘And there will be women who perhaps choose a man that one might regard as rather ...' she pauses delicately, ‘substandard, because, well, he's a man. That's fine.

But not everyone has to be married or have children. We've got to stop judging women for the choices they make in their lives.'
One of the great chroniclers of the lives of mid-life women, Trollope published her 22nd contemporary novel this year.
Mum & Dad, out in paperback this month, focuses on the sandwich generation: middle-aged people looking after their children and also their elderly parents, while trying to hold marriages together.
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But Trollope herself is past that stage. ‘I've had two husbands but I haven't been married for about 20 years — and they've been the best 20 years of my life,' she says, simply. Her closest male friends are gay and, as a committed grandmother of nine, she is very content with her lot.
Recently, she's been gripped by the BBC's adaptation of the David Nicholls novel, Us, about a mid-life couple falling apart.

‘The wife, Connie, just wakes up one morning and says: "I think our marriage has probably run its course now. There isn't anyone else involved.