It Changed My Life - Q Magazine, December 1994

It's a solitary pursuit rarely requiring both hands, and yet it has the power to transport one to the nether-regions of otherworldy delight. It's reading, it's widely enjoyed in book form, and here we reveal the calf-bound classics that have changed the lives of rock's best-read book worms.

Andy Partridge - "The Women's Encyclopedia Of Myths And Secrets" (Edited by Barbara G. Walker)

"I was staying with my girlfriend in New York and I asked for something to read in the toilet and I just grabbed this off the shelf and I was in there for hours. This is a concrete clock-sized book. Apparently, it took Barbara Walker 20 years to gather this information, and I was shocked at how male-dominated religion and society has stolen or milked from women: firstly, their power in society but also their myths, secrets and rights. It's a great Christian-bashing book which is wonderful for me. It's also a great soup of etymology which pleases me no end. For instance, from the same root as 'cunt' came country, kin and kind, and also the words cunning, kenning and ken, meaning insight. And it tells you that the word 'twat' was once ignorantly used by poet Robert Browning. But finally, like anything that's good, it really is impossible to describe."

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