Own up time. I have to confess that I do not like Anne Frank. Nothing major, just an inward face pull whenever I hear the name. Gives me that uncomfortable feeling of not being as nice a person as I should like to be, the same as not liking anybody does
Worse though, since she is supposed to be a heroine, an icon, a story of our time. So I never really thought about why not
Until this morning when I heard that they would be talking about her on Start The Week
I realised that it was the 1950s film that did it. Still a teenager, I just did not like her. Much as there were some girls at school I did not like – nothing major, but by unspoken consent, just some whose company you tended to avoid
Then, when Deborah Moggach was talking about how she had had to put herself, one by one, in the place of all the other characters who were in hiding with Anne, light dawned
For one of those was Anne’s big sister Margot. She had to be good, she could not get away with the things Anne got away with. She had probably, when younger, even been blamed if Anne got into trouble – You’re older, you should be looking after her
How well I know that feeling, as a big sister myself
