Margaret Hodge is the current Minister for Culture, Creative Industries and Tourism and is MP for Barking. She has overall responsibility for fashion, architecture, museums and galleries, and heritage. She was educated at Bromley High School and LSE, and has four children and four grandchildren.
LOOKING BACK:
We did a lot of sing songs as a child, with my mother playing on the piano, lots of German folk songs, it was how she made sure I learned my German. By the time I was a teenager, it was The Beatles’ era, so I was into them and the Stones, and I used to dance like mad to ‘American Pie’. I used to go and watch the Old Vic, and see Laurence Olivier and Vivian Leigh; it was a central part of my teenage years.
THE PRESENT:
I am just finishing reading the Hilary Mantel Booker Prize winner, Wolf Hall, about Thomas Woolsey and his relationship with Henry VIII, a really interesting book. I’m also reading the Alastair Campbell, which is a hilarious read! I am a film fanatic as well as everything else, and I love I’ll love you forever, a stunning French film about a woman who is in prison, and it looks at her relationship with her sister. I love Bridget Jones’ diary too.
THE FUTURE:
I’d choose Joan Baez ‘Last night I had the Strangest Dream’ to give to the next generation, and I would definitely want Maggie Smith to play me in a film about my life, she’s someone I really admire. I’d love to have Gillian Aers, my favourite contemporary artist to paint my portrait, because she’s bold and I like that, but it wouldn’t look like me at all. If I could only have access to one medium of the arts for the rest of my life, I would pick opera, totally.
